Panorama on Entrepreneurship Education in Higher Education: Indian Perspect

It is important to pursue research that can help guide the improvement of entrepreneurship education. The objective of this paper is to identify challenges and opportunities for enhancing Indian Higher Education in Entrepreneurship considering the demand for courses and activities in entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial intentions of students. Even at the top institutes in India that offer technical or management education with their popular support programs for student entrepreneurship, called ‘entrepreneurship cells’ or ‘E-cells’ the educational framework for inculcating the entrepreneurial spirits seems far from being satisfactory.

It is an exciting time to be an entrepreneur and independent to invent and lead. In recent decades, the entrepreneurial engineering workforce has helped the United States make substantial advancements in information technology, communications, health, defence, infrastructure, and manufacturing, and the time between the emergence of new technologies and their implementation has steadily declined. Prospect and confront keep on to require engineers by risk taking capacity and to literally invent the future by developing break-through technologies that solve worldwide problems and augment the quality of life.

This article examines the importance of entrepreneurship efforts in management and technical education, attitudes and engagement among educators and technical/management aspirants, prop up for entrepreneurship, remarkable programs, and early research on these initiatives.  Further to offer viewpoint on the future landscape for innovation and entrepreneurship in technical and management education.

Significance of Entrepreneurship Education

There has been a reasonable growth towards interest in entrepreneurship education due to opportunities, supportive environment and increasing risk bearing capacity among technical and management aspirants. Entrepreneurship education gives technicians/engineers a concrete experience in prototyping, artefact and development, inclination in technology, and market analysis that start companies soon after graduation. Relevant skills are required for being successful and recognised in the competitive world. Learner with required set of entrepreneurial training and joining established corporate are well equipped to become efficient team player with managerial skills to support their employers being proficient in invention.

Entrepreneurship education teaches engineering and management aspirants in all disciplines to increase knowledge source to apply competent tools and techniques. Further entrepreneurial education shapes their attitude to locate increasing opportunity in the competitive world with cautious observations.

Growing prop up towards entrepreneurship

In many universities, entrepreneurship is no longer restricted to B - schools. Practically it is one of the fastest mounting subjects in undergraduate education overall, with formal programs such as majors, minors, and certification courses. Further it is not limited to undergraduates; where in the interest in entrepreneurship extends beyond higher education. The IIT Bombay is planning to expand the capacity of its business incubator SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) threefold; IIT Kanpur is also doing the same and expanding the capacity of its incubator to 100, up from 33. IIT Madras plans to add more built-up space to cater to more entrepreneurs. At IIT Kanpur, SIDBI Innovation and Incubation Centre (SIIC) was started in 2000 in collaboration with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) to foster innovation, research and entrepreneurial activities in technology related areas. The IIT-M Research Park in Chennai not only invites leading companies to establish their research centres but also houses incubators and start-ups. It currently has around 30 to 40 companies incubating and expects to house 150 companies in the next five years.

The framework works at both ends by pushing entrepreneurial intentions and pulling higher levels of knowledge creation to support the needs of a core business course. The proposed diamond framework for an Effective Entrepreneurship Education Ecosystem in emerging economies is shown below.

Fig: Diamond framework for EEEE.

Faculty Engagement and Impacts

On one hand, the assimilation of entrepreneurship and innovation in engineering education and management need a shift in assessment and compliance on the part of faculty to participate in, or at least accept changes in, the respective curriculum. On the other hand online courses on entrepreneurship allow faculty and students far removed from vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems to access a wide range of instructors and content, and enable faculty to spend more time nurturing innovation. Recent experiences in introducing new approaches to engineering education are a good indicator of the challenges and a guide to approaches which will be effective. For example, unlike other IITs, IIT Kanpur affords the startups with subsidized services charging them every quarter and further consent to non-IITians also to approach it with a viable business idea and provides them with the facilities to incubate. If the incubatee is a student, the institute picks up 3 percent stake in the venture though there is no revenue sharing.

Conclusion

Developments in entrepreneurship, in theory as well as in practice, will fuel its growth. Change alone is constant. In the ever changing economy, engineers and managerial aspirants need to be able to work together successfully as leaders, in teams, and with their nobles. In addition to their technical, judgemental and analytical expertise, they need to be confident, supple, ingenious, compassionate, and have the ability to recognize and get hold of various opportunities. All these kind of skills can and should be taught to managerial aspirants and engineers as part of their formal education. Thus it is the responsibility of management and engineering educators to inculcate these qualities in students to enable them to be more pioneering and entrepreneurial.

Dr. U. M. Premalatha
Dr.Prema Latha U. M. is currently the Principal of Don Bosco Institute of Bio Sciences and Management Studies, Bangalore. She has been contributing her knowledge and research guidance for the Management Aspirants and Potential Entrepreneurs. She was the Chief Coordinator for MBA Department of Jain University, Bangalore. Earlier she was a Professor at RNS Institute of Technology in the Department of MBA and Research Canter. She has put 15 years of persistent experience in academics and 3 years of post research experience, in Women Entrepreneurship, Training and Development.