The Impact of Entrepreneurship Education in Higher Education: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda
Open accessAbstract
Using a teaching model framework, we systematically review empirical evidence on the impact of entrepreneurship education (EE) in higher education on a range of entrepreneurial outcomes, analyzing 159 published articles from 2004 to 2016. The teaching model framework allows us for the first time to start rigorously examining relationships between pedagogical methods and specific outcomes. Reconfirming past reviews and meta-analyses, we find that EE impact research still predominantly focuses on short-term and subjective outcome measures and tends to severely underdescribe the actual pedagogies being tested. Moreover, we use our review to provide an up-to-date and empirically rooted call for less obvious, yet greatly promising, new or underemphasized directions for future research on the impact of university-based entrepreneurship education. This includes, for example, the use of novel impact indicators related to emotion and mind-set, focus on the impact indicators related to the intention-to-behavior transition, and exploring the reasons for some contradictory findings in impact studies including person-, context-, and pedagogical model-specific moderators.
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The action-oriented training approach used in the ILO training has been found to be generally more effective in promoting entrepreneurship behaviors than other training approaches.
“This action-oriented training approach has been found to be generally more effective in promoting entrepreneurship behaviors than other training approaches (Campos et al., 2017;Nabi et al., 2017;Varamäki et al., 2015).”
From The impact of growth mindset training on entrepreneurial action among necessity entrepreneurs: Evidence from a randomized control trial (2023) · cites this paper as Nabi et al., 2017
Cites
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Students’ and graduates’ employability. A framework to classify and measure employability gain
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“As Nabi et al. (2017) recommended, we set the number of control groups equal to the number of experimental groups within the same school to overcome methodological issues.”
BackgroundInfluentialMorris, S., Carlos, C., Kistruck, G. M., Lount, R. B., & Thomas, T. E. (2023) · Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal · doi:10.1002/sej.1472 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Tran, L. K., Nguyen, L. T., & Pham, K. M. (2026) · Student Success · doi:10.63608/ssj.4067
- Authors
- Nabi, G., Liñán, F., Fayolle, A., Krueger, N., & Walmsley, A.
- Affiliations
- Manchester Metropolitan University (GB)
- Anglia Ruskin University (GB)
- École de management de Lyon (FR)
- University of Phoenix (US)
- University of Plymouth (GB)
- Venue
- Academy of Management Learning & Education
- Publisher
- Academy of Management
- Published
- 2017-06
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 277-299
- ISSN
- 1537-260X (ISSN-L)
- 1944-9585
- OpenAlex
- W2311618036
- Cited by
- 1,708
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 306 · 2025: 239 · 2024: 204 · 2023: 220 · 2022: 202 · 2021: 197 · 2020: 150 · 2019: 113 · 2018: 51 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 3
- FWCI
- 15.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- idus.us.es
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Academy of Management Learning and Education (publishedVersion)
- LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Deposito de Investigacion Universidad de Sevilla (University of Seville) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences
- Social Sciences › Education › Vocational and Entrepreneurial Education
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education and Employability
- Keywords
- entrepreneurship education, higher education, entrepreneurial outcomes, teaching methods, teaching model, impact indicators, entrepreneurial intention, emotions, mindset, research agenda
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