Title: Measuring the impact of entrepreneurship education: a cognitive approach to evaluation

Authors: Mark Hannan, Claire Leitch, Shirley-Ann Hazlett

Addresses: School of Management and Economics, 25 University Square, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. ' School of Management and Economics, 25 University Square, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK. ' School of Management and Economics, 25 University Square, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK

Abstract: The number of entrepreneurship courses currently being offered by universities has increased dramatically since the 1960s. This is primarily due to increased government emphasis on creating new ventures and alleviating unemployment. With this increase in entrepreneurship education, a number of issues still surround the delivery of entrepreneurship in universities. This paper aims to address one of these concerns, that of evaluation. Effective evaluation is needed to determine the net benefits of entrepreneurship courses to the stakeholders involved and also to address issues of accountability. This paper argues that through a cognitive approach to evaluation, researchers can measure the impact of entrepreneurship courses from the perspective of the student. A model adapting Shapero|s (model) |Entrepreneurial Event| and incorporating the cognitive approaches of self-efficacy, attitudes, perceived feasibility and desirability and entrepreneurial intentions to determine the effectiveness of entrepreneurship courses is presented.

Keywords: entrepreneurship education; evaluation; universities; cognition; higher education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCEELL.2006.010962

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning, 2006 Vol.16 No.5, pp.400 - 419

Published online: 21 Sep 2006 *

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