Entrepreneurship education and the creation of an enterprise culture: provisional results from an experiment in Egypt

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report (2008) for Egypt identified education and training as one of the main constraining factors to entrepreneurship development and the creation of an entrepreneurial culture in the country. Of the 31 countries participating in the National Experts’ Survey, Egypt was ranked in last place in terms of the contribution of the education system and the number one recommendation was that it needs to be reformed. Hence, the study examines the Entrepreneurial Tendencies of students of business administration at the British University in Egypt using the Durham University General Enterprising Tendency Test. It reveals that the entrepreneurial propensity of the Egyptian students is somewhat higher than that of their counterparts in the UK, despite the prevailing traditional “knowledge acquisition” pedagogy. When exposed to a more entrepreneurial style of teaching and learning, the students’ GET scores increased by about 8 per cent over a 12 week period, suggesting that if a change in the educational paradigm could be effected, it should be possible to effect a change in the way students think and behave, thereby helping bring about an entrepreneurial culture. The study examines the brain dominance of the students and makes proposals for future research.