Entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level : an examination of the present system and future directions

Being an island nation with few natural resources, Singapore has to rely extensively on her human resources to survive in the competitive world today. As our economy develops, there is a growing awareness to be self-reliant and the realisation that overdependence on foreign investors is dangerous. Our group sees the urgent need to expose young people to entrepreneurship and we consider education as one important route in encouraging them to consider self employment as a viable career option. In addition, our group advocates intrapreneurship as a path leading to entrepreneurship as we understand that it is not feasible for all the students to become entrepreneurs immediately upon graduation. Education and training play major and important roles in the development of an entrepreneur. The objective of our project is to examine the various entrepreneurship training programs available at tertiary institutions in Singapore and to suggest new approaches to entrepreneurship training. The various methods of researching for this project is discussed below. A review of literature was undertaken to explore the theory of entrepreneurship with special reference to the issue of entrepreneur education in Singapore. In addition, field studies were conducted to gather information on current entrepreneurship training available at tertiary institutions in Singapore. Interviews were conducted with entrepreneurs and academics to gather feedback and comments on the current entrepreneurship training available. Suggestions of new approaches were documented. Future directions for entrepreneurship education were also discussed. Finally, we concluded our project by suggesting improvements in several areas relevant to the local tertiary institutions.ACCOUNTANC