Creative Cross-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship

A Practical Guide for a Campus-Wide Program

D. Welsh

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137360793
• eBook ISBN: 9781137338341
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Creative Cross-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship responds to educational demands created through dramatic changes in the nature of business, by describing how to develop a cross-disciplinary curriculum in Entrepreneurship that further increases students' knowledge base in specific areas of interest and the development of an 'entrepreneurial mindset.'

CHAPTER 1

Why Do We Need Cross-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship?

The reason we need cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship is that students need it. The skill sets they need for tomorrow include the ability to be adaptable, flexible, creative, resourceful, and innovative. Entrepreneurship builds stronger and more flexible societies over time (Bucha, 2007). Leo Higdon (2005) in his seminal article on liberal education and the entrepreneurial mindset cited seven traits of the student who is “entrepreneurially informed.” These include challenging conventional thinking, seeing connections where others do not, understanding the value of teams, focusing on the greater goal, learning from setbacks (the ability to figure out what is important and react to it) and expecting surprises and adjusting, developing a sense of self and communicating effectively (Higdon, 2005).

Entrepreneurship teaches these skills better than any other discipline. Entrepreneurship is not just a mindset, it is a skill set that is the core to what we do in an educational institution. If all that is needed for an entrepreneur is to have an entrepreneurial mindset, we would not need the skills that are taught at higher education institutions as well as other learning platforms. Entrepreneurship can be applied to any discipline, major or minor, or to a course, workshop, or program across campus. All it takes is the desire on the part of the university, administration, and faculty to learn some basics about what entrepreneurship is, and how it can be applied. First, there has to be support from the top levels of the university. Administrators have to support it, through incentives and hands-on activities, and have to have a long-term commitment to it. To really do this, administrators and the upper echelons on the faculty hierarchy need to understand why it is critical to the survival of their university and its future. This includes the personal future of those employed in the higher education arena. The universities and colleges that don’t catch on will not survive. Why? Because they will have no students eventually. This may not happen immediately, but in the next ten years there will be a huge upheaval in higher education that will eliminate or consolidate many universities and colleges, becoming products of an age of information and rapidly changing fundamental tenets on how, what, and why people learn. This will make entrepreneurship across the curriculum even more applicable. Entrepreneurship allows all courses to be more applications-oriented and allows for the portability of skill sets across disciplines.

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are in the middle of “transformative changes” both at the conceptual level (new models of education, advancement of theories of social learning) and at the technological level (eLearning, mobile devices, learning networks) because of upheavals globally, socially, politically, and technologically (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013). Likewise, entrepreneurship education has advanced as a means to educate the new twenty-first-century workforce by giving it the skills to take any area of study or discipline and be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Creativity and innovation must be coupled with entrepreneurship to take the idea and innovation to the next step of development on to the market. Without entrepreneurship, the idea or innovation just sits there, and the product or service does not reach the population of potential users. Through entrepreneurship education, flexibility, adaptability, and resilience are taught and applied so that success can be achieved as workforce demands change over time.

The major changes in education and the environment worldwide are driven by the ultimate customer. In the case of education, the first-line customer is the student. These changes are as follows:

1. Continued increase in online college and university offerings. Online opportunities in entrepreneurship education are leading to increased educational opportunities (Siemens & Tittenberger, 2009) with practically no geographical or time boundaries. Online courses, offered for years by many universities, were mainly designed according to the traditional lecture format, which might explain, at least partly, their lack of success. Still, the need for technology improvement has been added to capital campaigns at colleges and universities with success. They have improved and increased dramatically in the last few years. Online programs at AACSB certified colleges and universities have increased from 27 percent in 2007 to 32.3 percent in 2012 (personal communication, Dr. John Fernandes, Academy of Management, August 11, 2013). This increases the outreach for students in growth markets, such as Africa and South America, whose populations are expected to continue growing through 2050. The student population in Western Europe will continue to decline, along with a major decline in US high-school students that is expected to occur in 2025 and beyond (personal communication, Dr. John Fernandes, Academy of Management, August 11, 2013).

2. Changes in the advanced online education marketplace are monumental and daily. While the Fathom for-profit online platform at Columbia University enrolled 65,000 students (2000–2003) (Redmon, 2012), the latest emerging massive open online courses (MOOCs) are registering learners by millions in less than a year, at no cost. Students learn with their feet, or in this case, with their computers. One look at the rapid shift and evolution of the MOOC revolution and XMOOCs, the second generation, capsulizes the new way we learn and get access to knowledge. Learners all over the world, including rising entrepreneurs, have increased educational opportunities due to the internet’s affordance of connectivity and free or low-cost to access the world’s most renowned professors and universities.

3. Explosion worldwide of start-up ventures by new and existing organizations. The implications of MOOCs on higher and entrepreneurial education will change the way of working of not only the higher education community, but also of the world itself in its potential to create, innovate, and launch new products, services, and businesses worldwide (Welsh & Dragusin, 2013). These include technology improvements by entrepreneurs, such as Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who is planning to use robotic drones to deliver Amazon’s goods to customers. Entrepreneur Richard Branson, who launched Virgin Galactic, joins Moon Express and Space X, all private companies headed into space travel for private citizens. Entrepreneurial corporations, such as Apple® Inc., Google Inc., and Nike Inc. launched the iPhone 5S®, the Google Glass™, and the Nike Fuelband® in 2013.

4. Greater personal access to knowledge. We are able to be more independent with health care devices such as the Alivecor® heart monitor smartphone add-on, among others, to help us get more exercise and watch our calories (Wadhwa, 2013). What is possible is now seen through the eyes that realize one’s personal potential and independence, and better personal responsibility for one’s health and welfare. Empowerment starts from within.

5. Higher levels of Psychological Capital (PsyCap). Access to knowledge brings a greater level of individual confidence and positive perception of what is individually possible. This is what Luthans and colleagues have identified as positive psychological capital or PsyCap (Luthans & Youssef, 2004). The core constructs of PsyCap include hope (goals and pathways), efficacy (confidence), resilience (bouncing back from adversity), and optimism (making positive attributions and having positive future expectations), Luthans calls this the “HERO within.” (DiPietro et al., 2008; DiPietro et al., 2007; Luthans et al., 2008; Luthans et al., 2005; Luthans et al., 2008; Luthans et al., 2007; Memili et al., 2013; Welsh, & Raven, 2011).

6. Higher levels of organizational confidence that leads to greater overall performance. This is due to higher levels of individual PsyCap from higher levels of individual knowledge. A meta-analysis of research over the past ten years found that employees’ PsyCap is positively related to desired attitudes, behaviors, and performance and negatively associated with undesirable employee attitudes (i.e., cynicism, turnover intentions, job stress, and anxiety) and undesirable employee behaviors (i.e., deviance) (Avey et al., 2011). PsyCap can be developed by short training programs, and can also be developed through online programs (Luthans et al., 2008). It can result in improved performance (Luthans et al., 2010). With the worldwide boom in online education, there should be a major impact on individual and organizational PsyCap, leading to better performance. Now McKenny et al. (2013) have introduced a method for measurement of organization-level PsyCap by drawing from Luthans and colleagues’ (2007) individual-level construct definition of PsyCap through a computer-aided text analysis design. The study showed that Organizational PsyCap (OPC) develops through employees interacting over time and reflects a shared level of positivity (McKenney et al., 2013). This should also apply to institutions of higher learning.

7. Increased student control and individual decision making. Students want personal control over all aspects of their individual world. This includes their university fees, including course fees and outside fees, the right to choose what they participate or not participate in and what they pay for. In other words, individual decision making will prevail according to the wishes of the customer—the student. Universities increasingly will have to give the consumers what they want, to survive with the increasing competition for students, and a model based on tuition revenue (Collier, 2013).

8. Visible, open access by organizations with input and feedback loops. Up to now this has not been the model in higher education. We have not only failed at explaining the rationale behind our decisions, but we have also not provided a sounding board to air complaints and opinions. The age of Facebook, instant messaging, Twitter, and other electronic communication means that exponentially grow each month puts our customers, the students, in a different environment than the confines of academia. Universities have defined the rules for graduation with each academic program but never had to explain why those are the courses or the guidelines that must be adhered to as well as when they will necessarily be updated.

Student input is seldom part of this process. If there is a representative on a curriculum committee, there is one student who is giving input out of the students’ interest with no incentive to do so or without much recognition by academia. Often, students are included on committees within universities as a public relations initiative, but are seldom taken seriously and are far outnumbered by the established faculty and staff on the committee. In my 25 years in academia, I have never seen students on a curriculum committee. They are perceived as having no expertise until they achieve a PhD or equivalent. But we are missing valuable inputs into how their generation may perceive the curriculum, how useful it is, how it may shape their future, and so on.

9. Less prerequisites and requirements for majors and graduation at traditional institutions of higher learning. It should be acknowledged that the academic community has put care and consideration into their programs, being experts in the field, with many a committee meeting and with multiple decision points. However, standard curricula based on knowledge of the past and civilization is being replaced with general courses. Maybe watered down? Are the humanities in crisis? For example, UCLA, home of the largest English major in the country with 1400 undergraduates, replaced their requirements to take one course in Chaucer, two in Shakespeare, and one in Milton with three courses in four areas: gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexual studies; imperial, transnational, and postcolonial studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; and creative writing (Mac Donald, 2014). Hunter Rawlings III addressed this in his acceptance speech at Princeton University when he received the Madison Medal (Rawlings, 2014). Credentialing can be overstated. It has been said that understanding the past helps us understand the future.

10. Clearer constraint-free pathways to achieving success. According to William Damon, the demise of the American dream is exaggerated. Students still want to achieve material success, but to them the American dream is also the ability to pursue which road to travel without constraints (Damon, 2013).

11. Increased transferability. This includes the transferability of courses, skills, and credentials around the world. For example, there was a 20-year-old state law in North Carolina that said that a plan had to be created to insure the transfer of course credits when possible (Boniti, 2014). But students found themselves not able to get many courses transferred from the community college system, and if they were able to get them transferred, they often transferred as electives instead of required courses, only to have to retake similar courses once they started at the four-year college or university. If an Associate of Arts (AA) degree was earned at a community college, the chances of the general education requirements transferring was much better, but not foolproof (Boniti, 2014). In March 2014, the 58 community colleges and 16 four-year universities signed an agreement that guarantees that every University of North Carolina campus must recognize any and all of the 30 semester hours of courses that the student completes with a C or better (Dalesio, 2014).

12. Standard academic course numbering systems. This includes the course title; identification numbers, department abbreviations, along with the description are comparable between public institutions within the state, whether they are two- or four-year institutions of higher learning (Bautsch, 2013). The value of this to the student is that when they transfer from a two-year to a four-year college or university within the state, full credit is given by the institution. The goal is to eliminate confusion and insure transfer of courses without individual transfer officers or faculty scanning each course individually for equivalency, which occurs now. The transfer office obtains the transcripts, meets with the students who petition to have a course or courses accepted as equivalent for full credit, then the transfer office person contacts the department of the particular course, which in turn contacts the professor to examine both syllabi, course objectives, textbook and materials, assignments, course time period, and course credit hours. Laws have been enacted in 15 states to have the same numbering system, while another 15 states have done so through the board of regents or community college policies. What has not been done is having policies between various state higher education institutions. This is particularly a problem when students transfer from one state to another and attempt to get their credits transferred. The next step that needs to be put in place is matriculation agreements between states (Bautsch, 2013).

13. Greater accountability and transparency at all levels. The State of Oregon has had a website for a number of years that updates daily state spending, including Oregon’s higher education system (Reynolds, 2014). This means that students can find out what is being spent on salaries, administration, travel, instruction, construction, and athletics (Reynolds, 2014). Costs in higher education have skyrocketed. Tuition fees for all universities (public and private), increased at an annual rate of 7.45 percent compared to health care rising at 5.8 percent and the consumer price index at 3.8 percent between 1978 and 2011 (Reynolds, 2014). These large increases in fees are not sustainable without affecting campus access and diversity (Guskin & Marcy, 2003).

14. Continued cutbacks in state and federal aid to colleges and universities. This has led to higher tuition fees and more student debt because education subsidies to the universities are being severely cut (Rawlings, 2014). A survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers showed that in 2013 the reduction in tuition fee list prices minus grants and scholarships hit a high of 45 percent, meaning that many students are getting major tuition fee discounts while others are paying full tuition fees(Reynolds, 2014). This is a result of cutbacks in state aid to colleges and universities. Tuition fees have been increased as a result of reduction in public spending for higher education and lower-income students and their families are having a harder time covering costs. The solution: students from higher- and middle-income backgrounds are paying more and subsidies called “tuition set-asides” are available to lower-income students based on need (Belkin, 2014). Since 2005, tuition and fees have gone up 174 percent at 12 flagship state universities surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Translated into real dollars, during the 2012–2013 academic year, students at these schools transferred $512,401,435 to lower-income classmates compared to $186,960,962 in inflation-adjusted dollars in the 2005–2006 school year (Belkin, 2014). Students and parents will see this as an inequity that is not being disclosed and not being explained, and as the marketplace becomes more competitive for students, they will choose to go where they get the most for their dollars.

15. Higher value expectations. The value of a higher education degree is being questioned in light of rising loan rates and whether employment prospects are really better with a college degree. Students are brainwashed to some extent by the media repeatedly broadcasting the average income increments that come with additional education, which provides a reason to stay in college (Collier, 2013). But this is deteriorating. Since 2006, the gap between the earnings of a high-school graduate and those of a college graduate has declined dramatically to $1,387 for men over 25 working full time, a 5 percent decrease. For women, it is 7 percent of their income advantage, or $1496 (Vedder & Denhart, 2014). According to the College Board, for students between the ages of 25 and 34, the differential between college graduate and high-school graduate earnings fell 11 percent. For women it was 19.7 percent (Vedder & Denhart, 2014). All the while the cost of going to college has increased 16.5 percent using 2012 dollars since 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Vedder & Denhart, 2014).

16. Greater pressure to continually reduce costs at colleges and universities. According to Vedder and Denhart (2014), the falling demand for higher education will result in colleges actually having to constrain costs. Often when universities and colleges face a crisis, I believe they solve it by adding administrators. For example, at UNCG, the Joint Working Group on Employment Analysis (2014) found that over the interval 2007–2008 to 2011–2012, student enrollment increased 5.8 percent (879 Full Time Equivalency [FTE]), while total revenue increased 10 percent and total expenditure 12 percent. What ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Why Do We Need Cross-Disciplinary Entrepreneurship?
• 2  How to Build an Entrepreneurial University
• 3  Cross-Disciplinary Curriculum
• 4  Interactive Models and Resources outside the Classroom
• 5  Assurance of Learning and Accreditation Issues
• 6  Case Study: The University of North Carolina Greensboro
• 7  Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index