Obstacles to Establishing Venture Creation Based Entrepreneurship Education Programs

While many scholars argue for the value of action-based entrepreneurship education programs comparedto traditional theory and lecture based teaching (Mwasalwiba, 2010), seemingly few such programs exist.We hypothesized that this could be explained by the existence of obstacles to establishing action-basedentrepreneurship education programs, and that these obstacles may be categorized into three main areas –financial obstacles (Mwasalwiba, 2010), educational paradigm obstacles (Taatila, 2010, Hager, 2005,Kyr\uf6, 2005) and incentive obstacles (Wright et al., 2009). The purpose of the paper is to explore asegment of action-based entrepreneurship educations identified as venture creation programs (VCPs),where real-ventures are created within the educational framework, and empirically investigate obstaclesexperienced by the facilitators of these programs. Thus, the research question is: What obstacles areexperienced when establishing (facilitating) a VCP at a Higher Education Institution?This paper is part of a larger research study investigating VCPs. We build from an initial investigation ofsix VCPs from Europe (Gothenburg, Louvain, Lund and Troms\uf6) and North America (Eugene andBoston), identified through literature and other written documentation, internet resources, peer referenceand snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with program directors in order toexplore obstacles experienced in establishing the particular VCP.Among the investigated six VCPs the main hypothesis regarding obstacles in establishing these programs,was not supported – few serious obstacles were identified among the studied VCPs. The main conclusionof this article thus has to be that a rare occurrence of VCPs requires other explanations