Enhancing higher entrepreneurship education: Insights from practitioners for curriculum improvement

Curricula for higher entrepreneurship education should meet the requirements of both a solid theoretical foundation and a practical orientation. When these curricula are designed by education specialists, entrepreneurs are usually not consulted. To explore practitioners’ curricular recommendations, we conducted 73 semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs with at least five years of professional experience. We collected 49 items for teaching and learning objectives, 37 for contents, 28 for teaching methods, and 17 for assessment methods. The respondents are convinced that students should acquire solid knowledge in business and management, legal issues, and entrepreneurship. For the latter, only some core aspects are provided. The entrepreneurs put greater emphasis on entrepreneurial skills and attitudes and consider experiential learning designs as most suitable, both in the secure setting of the classroom and in real life. The findings can help reflect on current entrepreneurship curriculum designs. •Entrepreneurs recommend entrepreneurship educators to focus on honing entrepreneurial skills and attitudes rather than acquiring entrepreneurial knowledge (teaching objectives).•They stress general business and management topics more than entrepreneurship topics (teaching contents).•Experiential learning designs are preferred, in particular, based on real rather than fictive experiences (teaching methods).•Assessments can often be integrated in teaching and learning. Students succeed when they can perform entrepreneurial tasks well (assessment methods).