To Teach or Try: A continuum of approaches to entrepreneurship education in Australasia

This paper reports on a survey of Australasian university entrepreneurship education programs. The survey found a continued interest in entrepreneurship at Australasian universities and that entrepreneurship is typically well supported. In addition, entrepreneurship education in Australasia is very cross-disciplinary in nature with students from engineering, science, arts, agriculture, law, and medicine taking the classes. Two approaches emerged as dominate pedagogies: (1) a traditional process- based approach to teaching; and (2) an experiential approach to coaching the students to “try” some act of entrepreneurship. Topics most frequently taught include (1) foundations of entrepreneurship; (2) business planning; (3) small business management; and (4) entrepreneurial finance. Approaches to teaching varied with lectures, cases, business plans, and guest speakers being typically used. In addition, more trying entrepreneurship—hands on learning—methods such as presentations, role playing, and consulting are being incorporated as important dimensions of university level entrepreneurship.