Abstract:
Youth unemployment, especially among graduates, continues to be widespread nationally and internationally.
Minimal research is reported on the role of academics as change agents to drive and instil entrepreneurial spirit
among students. This article reports on a survey done in South African institutions of higher education about the
attitudes of academics to the inclusion of entrepreneurial programmes as mandatory in an academic setting. The
difficult situation in which university staff find themselves currently, balancing the three roles university
institutions are expecting of them, namely teacher, researcher, community worker, has an impact on their
attitudes to change. With the appropriate didactic approach to entrepreneurship, students’ entrepreneurial
orientation is likely to be enhanced. For this article, a mixed method, i.e. in-depth desktop documentary analysis
and semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 161 purposively sampled respondents. ANOVAs
and post hoc multiple comparison of means tests revealed that gender, education level and age are significant in
shaping the interest lecturers have in entrepreneurial programmes for their students. Demographic data of
respondents differed significantly in terms of their attitudes towards the importance of entrepreneurial orientation
and their abilities to transfer vital entrepreneurial competencies to students. Seventy eight percent of
respondents were in favour of a much stronger presence of entrepreneurial emphasis across academic
programmes, with 52% in support of it being mandatory. Interactive, problem- and project-based, simulations,
and modelling were viewed as the most effective didactical strategies by academics to foster and inculcate
entrepreneurial spirit amongst students. This research may be used not only to inform curriculum development
policies on didactic approaches to be applied to subjects such as entrepreneurship at the universities, but also
help to convert academics into entrepreneurial advocates.
