Entrepreneurship Education in UK HEIs: Origins, Development and Trends

Industry and Higher Education

Volumn 13, Issue 6, 1999, Pages 382-389

  Watkins, David ^a   Stone, Gareth ^a  

^a SOUTHAMPTON SOLENT UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0012282693     PISSN: 09504222     EISSN: 20436858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5367/000000099101294726     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. London and Manchester Business Schools were established following the Franks Report, which recommended the creation of university-level institutions. These were associated with London University and Manchester University respectively, but were sufficiently independent to attract separate funding from the University Grants Council. Previously, management education and development had been largely the province of independent institutions such as Ashridge College and the Administrative Staff College, Henley. These focused on developing well established managers and were not degree-awarding institutions. Other HEIs also established business schools at about this time – notably Bradford University and Cranfield – but these were formed on a less independent basis and were not so generously endowed.
2. In the USA the position has always been quite different, with a strong distinction drawn between these categories. ‘Small business’ courses are implicitly aimed at ‘Ma and Pa Stores’ and other firms of limited growth potential, and tend to be taught mainly in institutions lower in the academic food-chain; ‘entrepreneurship’ courses focus on high-potential firms, often new and requiring substantial high-risk investment from the outset. These courses tend to be concentrated in the more prestigious business schools. The current paper cannot address US provision in any detail. However, interested readers are directed to the semi-annual surveys conducted by Vesper and Gartner, such as: Vesper Karl H., Gartner William B., University Entrepreneurship Programs, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1999. The current edition can be downloaded as an MS Word file from: www.marshall.usc.edu/entrepreneur/.
3. These courses were known as ‘New Enterprise Programmes’ (NEPs). For contemporaneous discussion by the current author see: Watkins David, ‘The New Enterprise Programme: The formation of new firms’, Keynote Address, 7th Annual EFMD European Small Business Seminar, Aahus, Denmark, 1977; Watkins David, ‘The New Enterprise Programme: An MBS initiative to encourage and support the formation of new firms’, Manchester Business School Journal, Vol 3, No 2, 1979; and Watkins David, ‘Forderung von Betiebsgrundungen in Gross Britannien’, Internationales Gewerbearchiv, Vol 27, No 3, 1979.
4. The problem was as follows. The enabling legislation which created the UK government body issuing the contract – a semiautonomous agency of the then Department of Employment known at that time as the Manpower Services Commission – expressly prevented funding of courses which would benefit a single employer. Since the NEP was designed to create new employers, which would be the only initial beneficiaries, ministerial approval was required and an Order in Council had to be laid before Parliament before the course could proceed!.
5. For an overview by the responsible civil servant at that time, see: Hyde Graham C., ‘The relationship between policy and research’, in Rosa Peter, Birley Sue, Cannon Tom, O'Neil Ken, eds, The Role and Contribution of Small Business Research, Avebury, Aldershot, 1989, pp 55–78.
6. Later known as the Training Services Agency, and then simply the Training Agency, before its re-integration into the mainstream Departmental structures.
7. A development of NEP offered at Manchester and Dorset Business Schools and elsewhere, known as ‘Firmstart’ also accepted businesses in their first year of trading. The point in time at which a business can be said to ‘start’ was the subject of much academic study in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. The interaction of research and policy at this time was particularly close, and this academic uncertainty was used to justify expanding the number of firms eligible for ‘start-up’ programmes. Cf Watkins David, ‘Technical innovation and entrepreneurship in the UK’, in Taylor Robert L., O'Connell Michael J., Zawacki Robert A., Warrick D. D., eds, Proceedings of the 37th Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, 1977; and Watkins David, ‘Grundlagen einer offentlichen politik zungunsten von grundung und ausbau gewerblicher betriebe’, Internationales Gewerbearchiv, Vol 25, No 2, 1977.
8. Vyakarnam Shia, Jacobs Robin, ‘Teamstart – overcoming the blockages to small business growth’, in Chittenden Francis, Robertson Martyn, Marshall Ian, eds, Small Firms: Partnerships for Growth, Paul Chapman Publishing, London, 1995.
9. Whereas the NEP typically lasted 3–4 months and gave access to additional funds for business research purposes by individual participants as part of an action-learning approach, a Small Business Programme lasted only 10–12 weeks, and was usually more formally structured. For a discussion see: Dyson Jerry, ‘The position of New Enterprise Programmes in the process of start-up: An approach to matching enterprise founding programmes to different categories of business founder,’ in Webb Terry, Quince Thelma, Watkins David, eds, Small Business Research: The Development of Entrepreneurs, Gower, Aldershot, 1982, pp 99–116.
10. Initially these self-employment courses lasted about 6 weeks and were conducted on a part-time basis. Cost-cutting later reduced this to as little as a three-day intervention in the start-up process.
11. The training programmes discussed here were themselves an important stimulus to research. For example, the paymasters were interested in independent economic analysis of their activities. Cf Johnson Peter, Thomas Barry, ‘The economic evaluation of small business support systems: A case study’, in Lewis John, Stanworth John, Gibb Allan, eds, Success and Failure in Small Business, Gower, Aldershot, 1984, pp 227–248. Equally, entrepreneurship educators were keen to evaluate the training effectiveness of various approaches and build models of good practice. Cf Gibb Allan A., ‘Designing effective programmes for encouraging the small business start up process,’ Journal of Education and Industrial Training, Vol 4, 1987, pp 24–32; and Gibb Allan A., Ritchie John R., ‘Understanding the process of starting small businesses’, International Small Business Journal, Vol 1, No 1, 1982, pp 26–45.
12. Moed and Hesselink discuss this in the context of the Netherlands' research assessment processes: Moed H. F., Hesselink F. Th., ‘The publication output and impact of academic chemistry research in the Netherlands during the 1980s: Bibliometric analyses and policy implications’, Research Policy, Vol 25, 1996, pp 819–836.
13. Vesper Gartner, , Ref 2, include ‘outreach’ as a key factor in their surveys and it is an integral part of the ranking schemes used when assessing entrepreneurship education in the USA. It is difficult to imagine this factor being taken into account by any UK panel in the UK Research Assessment Exercise.
14. Many UK HEIs have experienced difficulties with their funding agencies and audit bodies when apparently using a small proportion of the money intended to support award-bearing courses for traditional UK students in ‘creative’ ways, such as investment in profit-seeking franchise schemes overseas. This has made them cautious even in supporting those outreach activities that they have undertaken in the past unless these clearly can be seen to cover all costs from the outset. The situation may change in the near future, since the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced the formation of a ‘Higher Education Reach-out to Business and the Community Fund’ supported by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE), the DTI and the Department of Education for Northern Ireland (DENI). This is expected to form the basis of a permanent third funding stream, rising to about £22 million annually by 2001–02. Growth-oriented SMEs and spin-off companies from HEIs are among the specifically identified likely beneficiaries of the scheme. (HEFCE, Higher Education Reach-Out to Business and the Community Fund: Invitation to Apply for Special Funding, HEFCE 99/40, Higher Education Funding Council for England, Bristol, June 1999.)
15. Some authors, particularly those based at Durham University, have long argued that interaction with the SME sector is – or should be – a key driver in the process of modernizing university business schools (eg Gibb Allan, ‘Entrepreneurship and small business management: Can we afford to neglect them in the twenty-first century business school?’, British Journal of Management, Vol 7, No 4, 1996, pp 309–321) or even the core universities themselves (Cf Fiona Tilley and David Johnson, ‘Modernization of universities through greater interaction with small firms’, Industry and Higher Education, Vol 13, No 2, 1999, pp 119–126).
16. These included initiatives such as the Management Extension Programme and the Business Growth Programme Option 3, evaluated respectively in: Marshall Neill J., Alderman Neil, Wong Cecilia, Thwaites Alfred, ‘The impact of management training and development on small and medium enterprises’, International Small Business Journal, Vol 13, No 4, 1995, pp 73–90; and Atkin Rod, Gibb Allan, ‘The management extension programme,’ in Faulkner Terry, Beaver Graham, Lewis John, Gibb Allan, eds, Readings in Small Business, Gower, Aldershot, 1986, pp 294–327.
17. Crane Diana, Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1972.
18. Aspects of this process have been described quantitatively in: Watkins David, ‘Changes in the nature of UK small business research, 1980–1990. Part One: Changes in producer characteristics’, Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol 1, No 3, 1994, pp 28–31; and Watkins David, ‘Changes in the nature of UK small business research, 1980–1990. Part Two: Changes in the nature of the output’, Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol 2, No 1, 1995, pp 59–66; and more qualitatively in: Watkins David, ‘Reflections on the development of small business research in the United Kingdom’, Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Biennial Rencontres de St Gall, Schweizerisches Insitut für gewerbliche Wirtschaft an der HSG, University of St Gallen, St Gallen/Elm, 1998.
19. Policy tends to evolve in circles. Perhaps the government's new (technically, at the point of writing, proposed) Small Business Service will revisit some of these ideas.
20. In the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) ‘Business and Management Studies’ was the second largest of more than 60 ‘disciplines’ assessed. In the 2001 RAE, ‘Entrepreneurship’ is specifically identified as a sub-theme of ‘Business and Management Studies’ for the first time. (See HEFCE Circular 2/99, Higher Education Funding Council for England, Bristol, 1999.)
21. Watkins (1998), , Ref 19, also gives the distribution of the research papers presented at these events. Even when plotting only research output from recent years the distribution is very similar to that in Figure 3.
22. SESAME stands for South East Small And Medium Sized Enterprise Database. In Middle-Eastern folklore it was the magic word that opened up the cave full of treasures …
23. In partnership with Professor Colin Mason of the Geography Department at Southampton University.
24. Under the DfEE Higher Education and Regional Development (HERD) scheme, via the Regional Government Office for the South East at Guildford. The former HERD budget has subsequently been subsumed under the Regional Competitiveness Fund of the Regional Development Agencies.
25. www.solent.ac.uk/sesame contains a database summarizing the results of the survey discussed in this paper. This can be accessed via an active map so that users can explore provision nearest to them. Hot links then lead them to the Website of the appropriate HEIs. The site also contains resources such as case studies which can be downloaded for use by entrepreneurship educators; a list of forthcoming small business/entrepreneurship conferences; a bibliographic database covering recent research in this field; and other useful materials and links.
26. So far £25 million has been earmarked to set up eight university ‘Centres of Excellence’ to encourage scientists and engineers to turn their ideas into businesses. The likely winners in the first round, which are expected to become regional foci of expertise, are Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, Nottingham and Sheffield Universities, together with London Business School, Imperial College and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). However, in our survey there was little evidence of close liaison between technical and business colleagues even within the same HEIs. Hopefully, if these Centres operate outside a qualification framework, and offer sufficient material rewards to all participants, they will be able to break down some of the existing barriers.