Enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE) in higher education (HE) is expanding, emphasizing diverse outcomes and teaching methods. This special issue explores extracurricular EEE, which includes voluntary activities like business competitions, networking events, and guest speakers, aimed at enhancing entrepreneurial skills and promoting entrepreneurship as a career. These activities are currently facing challenges in sustainability, engagement and varying availability across institutions. Additionally despite evidence of the positive impacts of employability and entrepreneurial endeavors, research on the value of these activities remains limited. This speical issue intends to address this deficit and includes six research papers examining various aspects of extracurricular EEE and, collectively, providing valuable insights for educators and policymakers to enhance EEE practices.

The development of tourism has historically been characterised by enterprising individuals. Small businesses are the backbone of the tourism and hospitality industry. However, entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial process have long been marginal topics within tourism scholarship. This is a critical, yet accessible, introduction to the subject. Structured into twelve chapters, this book takes an intuitive step-by-step progression through entrepreneurship in tourism: context, theoretical perspectives and definitions; the entrepreneurial process from concept to reality to growth, policy context and future directions. Featuring learning outcomes, 'reflective practice' activities and a range of international case studies that encourage critical thinking and practical applications, this is essential reading for anyone studying tourism degree programmes at undergraduate and graduate level.

Purpose To examine the process of entrepreneurial identity and intent formation in higher education and to assess the contribution of enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE) as part of this process. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a mixed-method, longitudinal research design. An e-survey ( n = 145) obtained baseline data on entrepreneurial intentions and identity at the start of a group of undergraduate students’ first academic year. Based on an ideal-typical sampling strategy, 18 students completed fortnightly diary entries over the course of the academic year. Findings In-year fluctuations in and between entrepreneurial identity and intent scores were pronounced. This challenges perceptions of an uncomplicated, linear relationship between both constructs. Explaining these fluctuations, two types of developmental trajectory were identified: “convergence,” whereby identity and intent scores came closer together as the year progressed, and “synchronicity,” whereby scores fell and rose in tandem. The contribution of EEE, although overall positive in relation to an increase in identity and intent scores, was mitigated by a challenging career-developmental setting, adding to calls for a more contextual understanding of the impact of EEE. Originality/value A limited number of studies have examined the development of entrepreneurial identity or intent using a longitudinal design, with none seeking to explain their co-development over time. The adopted longitudinal design has achieved a more detailed understanding of the shaping of entrepreneurial identity and intent and the role of EEE in this process.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify entrepreneur mentor benefits and challenges as a result of entrepreneurship mentoring in higher education (HE).Design/methodology/approachAn entrepreneurship mentoring scheme was developed at a UK university to support prospective student entrepreneurs, with mentors being entrepreneurs drawn from the local business community. A mentor-outcomes framework was developed and applied to guide semi-structured interviews.FindingsResults supported the broader applicability of our framework, with a revised framework developed to better represent the entrepreneur mentor context. Alongside psychosocial and personal developmental outcomes, mentors benefitted from entrepreneurial learning, renewed commitment to their own ventures and the development of additional skills sets. Enhanced business performance also manifested itself for some mentors. A range of challenges are presented, some generic to the entrepreneur setting and others more specific to the higher education (HE) setting.Research limitations/implicationsThe framework offered serves as a starting point for further researchers to explore and refine the outcomes of entrepreneur mentoring.Practical implicationsThe findings serve to support those considering developing a mentor programme or including mentoring as part of a formal entrepreneurship education offer, specifically in a university setting but also beyond.Originality/valueThe vast majority of entrepreneurship mentoring studies focus on the benefits to the mentee. By focusing on benefits and challenges for the entrepreneur mentor, this study extends our knowledge of the benefit of entrepreneurship mentoring. It offers an empirically derived entrepreneur mentor outcomes framework, as well as offering insights into challenges for the entrepreneur mentor within an HE setting.

PurposeThis study offers insights into how the entrepreneurship educator (EE) is legitimised in higher education.Design/methodology/approachThis exploratory study is based on content analysis of 73 university programme specifications, 61 university strategies and 35 job advertisements. The study uses Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of organisational legitimacy to assist in categorising the results according to type of legitimacy.FindingsConnections are made between the legitimacy of the EE and wider societal discourses surrounding the legitimacy of enterprise/entrepreneurship as expressed in university strategies. Attempts to legitimise the EE specifically, as opposed to “the educator” more broadly understood, are quite limited. Programme specifications mainly offer a cognitive form of legitimacy relating to teaching, with elements of pragmatic legitimacy arising from educators’ links to industry and research prowess. Job descriptions are more focused on the educator’s research as a form of legitimation.Research limitations/implicationsThe study creates a baseline of knowledge surrounding the legitimacy of the EE, which raises important questions as to how the educator is supposed to add value in relation to different stakeholders.Originality/valueThe concept of legitimacy, despite widespread application in other disciplines, has found very limited application in the study of EE. Using three sources of data, the paper offers a first application of Suchman’s (1995) conceptualisation of legitimacy to entrepreneurship education. It thereby offers a critical perspective on the role of the EE as shaped by institutional norms.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the underexplored link between entrepreneurship education (EE) and graduate employability in the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK).Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on a thematic content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 45 professionals in UK HE, representing the “supply” side of EE.FindingsThe findings demonstrate a unidirectional link between EE and employability outcomes. This link is affected by societal, stakeholder-related, and teaching and learning-related factors.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough the value of universities’ initiatives connecting EE and employability for economic development is emphasized, the study does not provide direct empirical evidence for this effect. Macroeconomic research is needed.Practical implicationsEE and employability would benefit from knowledge exchange between universities’ stakeholders and a broader understanding of what constitutes a valuable graduate outcome.Social implicationsThe study reveals the benefits of EE on a micro level. Participation in EE supports the connection between individual investments in HE and employability.Originality/valueBased on human capital theory, many policymakers regard EE as a vehicle through which the relationship between investments in HE and career success on a micro level and economic growth on a macro level can be nurtured. Challenging this logic, the study highlights the potential of institutional theory to explain a contextualization of the link between EE and employability on a national level.

Studies published over the last four decades provide the basis for a systematic review of the impact of mentoring in higher education (HE) on student career development. We review 73 papers published between 1986 and 2023 and develop a framework to examine the relationships between mentoring approaches and career development outcomes. Here, we distinguish between different student populations (female students, under-represented groups). Notwithstanding an overall positive verdict on mentoring's career development potential, with particular emphasis on career choice and transitioning behaviour, the results are not always positive, and many nuances in the data are evident. At a time of increased concern about student transitions into the labour market, practical implications can be derived which may strengthen mentoring's benefits, e.g. the value of peer mentoring for female students, and cultural proximity of mentors for under-represented minority students pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Key research recommendations include:(1) developing novel impact indicators related to emotion such as career inspiration and passion; (2) examining under-researched impact indicators related to non-traditional student careers (e.g. entrepreneurial intentions), and employment and socioeconomic impact indicators; and (3) investigating the role of context and mentoring content and delivery modalities, in helping to explain inconsistent findings across the reviewed papers.

AbstractThis study explores the extent to which entrepreneurship education (EE) impacts individual political attributes at the level of the individual student. The rationale here is EE’s alignment with an emancipatory principle that can also be found in Critical Pedagogy (CP). This emancipatory principle resonates with the individual recognizing their place within a socioeconomic system and subsequently seeking to change the system; i.e., they become politically engaged. Drawing on a sample of entrepreneurship students in Denmark, scores on a range of political measures were compared at the start and at the end of a semester in which students engaged in entrepreneurship education. The political measures comprised “political interest,” “political orientation,” “civic engagement,” and “sociopolitical control.” Overall, results indicate a shift toward more politically interested and engaged students. This exploratory study sets the scene for more research in this area that seeks to understand the potential inherent in EE for political change.

This paper recognises sustainability’s role as a core competence of all entrepreneurs and reviews and discusses the drivers for and challenges of integrating ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD) within entrepreneurship curricula. The authors have contributed to this literature and have discussed at length the development of the field from both academic and practitioner perspectives. The paper includes reference to policy initiatives promoting the integration of ESD within Higher Education, and the competencies that all graduates are expected to achieve, and discusses the challenges faced by HE providers and Enterprise Educators in particular. Building on the contributions of Moon (2022) and Moon et al. (2022) the authors posit that a new dynamic model based on Passion for the subject, Pride in the university, Personal contribution, and Performance impact, is a novel approach for recognising some of the challenges faced but also the cross-cutting and transdisciplinary benefits of a renewed focus on Impact – using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework – and building on identity as a foundation.

The entrepreneurship educator plays a key role in entrepreneurship education (EE) with the responsibility to plan and execute its delivery. Though scarce, research on the topic underlines how educators evolve and interact in an environment full of other actors (Foliard, Le Pontois, Fayolle, & Diermann, 2019) and deliver teaching entrepreneurship from a dialogical based ecosystem (Birgitte Wraae & Walmsley, 2020). One of these many interactions is with the educational institution, whose role it is to brand themselves externally to potential stakeholders and students (Jones & Matlay, 2011) This preliminary study uses as its theoretical foundation Legitimacy Theory, specifically Suchman’s (1995) constructs of ‘pragmatic’, ‘moral’ and ‘cognitive’ legitimacy. Our aim is to understand how the institutional environment legitimises the entrepreneurship educator and by implication what this means for EE more generally. The study will thereby provide insights into what role the educator plays and the mechanisms by which legitimacy is granted. Data were collected in 2022 on all undergraduate enterprise or entrepreneurship programmes (all programmes with either enterprise or entrepreneurship in their title) at undergraduate level in the UK. Access to programme information was provided via the central government-supported body UCAS. In total 73 programmes were identified and scrutinised for how the entrepreneurship educator was legitimised conforming to a form of discourse analysis. More specifically, following Suchman (1995) our search was focused on any mention of the teaching staff and whether that mention contained a pragmatic, moral or cognitive legitimising element. The preliminary results are startling in the sense that only rarely is the entrepreneurship educator directly legitimised. With this, we mean the role they play in the delivery of EE is neither argued on the grounds of their prowess (pragmatic legitimacy), their benefits to wider society (social legitimacy) or even just by explaining what makes them distinct as educators (cognitive legitimacy). Rather than focussing on the educator directly, programme specifications indirectly provide some insights into what they expect from the educator, or what is valued in EE. These early results raise a number of important questions as to how the entrepreneurship educator is perceived, legitimised and possibly even taken for granted. Recommendations for future research and practice are offered.