Making enterprise education more relevant through mission creep

Abstract

This chapter identifies a key future development opportunity for enterprise education through a critical analysis of the definitional foundations of entrepreneurship. Two previously neglected societal purposes of entrepreneurship are shown capable of making enterprise education more applicable and relevant to educational institutions and educational policymakers. When enterprise educators view their mission as being about developing their students’ competencies – both entrepreneurial and others – through opportunities to create value for others, it represents an altruistic and moral turn in entrepreneurship. This marks a departure from the usual economic policy aligned mission of generating job growth and improved employability. It instead makes enterprise education align well with key educational policy priorities such as student learning, study motivation, perceived relevancy of schooling and the inculcation of democratic and communitarian values in students. Implications include a need to move policy efforts around enterprise education from ministries of trade and business to ministries of education, and a need to shift the debate from what educators can do for budding entrepreneurs to what entrepreneurial graduates can do for society.