Reforms and innovation in Entrepreneurship Education in universities in Uganda

Abstract

Entrepreneurship Education (EE) has been recognized as one type of education that can provide skills toparticipants for value creation. Its origin is in economics literature and was considered as one of the factors ofproduction not until after the second world war when it started emerging as independent discipline. Theteaching of entrepreneurship started in Harvard Business School with the aim of generating jobs throughbusiness start-ups. This was also to boost the economic activities that were interrupted by the world war. As aresult of Entrepreneurship education, a number of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) were established. TheSMEs started contributing to economic development of those countries that had embraced entrepreneurshipeducation.The introduction of entrepreneurship education led most economies to recognize that entrepreneurship is a keydriver of economic growth and source of innovation. This spurred up governments to call on universities toproduce more enterprising graduates. The integration of entrepreneurship education into the university educationcurriculum was to equip graduates with skills to function well and to contribute to economic development of thesociety. Besides economic development entrepreneurship education result into increased societal resilience,individual growth and increased university engagement with the community.Over the years entrepreneurship education has assumed extraordinary relevance within university academicprograms all over the world. Despite the intended goal of entrepreneurship education, universities, especially inAfrica, have been challenged for failing to produce graduates equipped with skills to function well and tocontribute to economic development of the society. There are a number of issues contributing to this challenge.One of the issues commonly raised is to do with the pedagogy especially with regard to entrepreneurshipeducation. Very little is known about entrepreneurship pedagogy course in universities especially in Uganda.This work discusses the status of entrepreneurship education pedagogy, providing an overview of the reformsand innovation in Entrepreneurship Education in universities. The discussion is based on the following: thecurrent debate in Entrepreneurship Education, the reforms in teaching entrepreneurship in universities, thebenefits of reform in entrepreneurship education in universities, the challenges of managing reforms in teachingentrepreneurship in universities,description of the approaches of undertaking reforms in entrepreneurship education pedagogy, Opportunities forEast African Universities and conclusion. Focus will be on case-based teaching and learning in the wake ofCOVID-19 pandemic.