Great Universities Generate Entrepreneurship: Universities and Entrepreneurship Education in the AI Era

Verification notes (2026-10-29): 1. Author Yang Bin is a professor in the Department of Leadership and Organization Management at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management, consistent with the post’s attribution. Source: https://sem.tsinghua.edu.cn/info/1202/33263.htm ---- Great universities generate entrepreneurship There are many ways to measure and evaluate “What makes a good university?” But in the AI era, one concise test is this: the better the university, the more entrepreneurship it fosters—great universities generate entrepreneurship. In the AI era, innovation and entrepreneurship education becomes central to why universities should continue to exist. Young people no longer come to campus for traditional one-to-many instruction, but to develop as people, build capabilities, and form communities through action learning in entrepreneurship education. Why entrepreneurship education? Why is this a university’s value that AI cannot replace? Because it offers the richest setting for “embodied learning” and “whole-person engagement.” Embodied learning means experiencing things physically and grappling with them hands-on. Whole-person engagement means bringing your full self to the experience, deeply connecting it with emotions, relationships, and self-understanding. Youth is the best time for entrepreneurship education. Cultivating a new generation full of entrepreneurial spirit is a distinctive contribution universities can make to the future economy and society in the AI era. “Teaching entrepreneurship.” When we say someone at a university “teaches XYZ,” we usually mean, narrowly, that they teach one or more courses called XYZ. XYZ generally belongs to a discipline or field and represents a subset of its knowledge. The teacher is typically an academic trained in that specialty who earned a doctorate and obtained a faculty position. That is generally how the ivory tower works. Many business schools offer entrepreneurship management electives, and there are plenty of entrepreneurship books. Many are expansive but overly theoretical and far removed from practice. Many professors and books teach the academic study of entrepreneurship rather than the practical knowledge and skills entrepreneurs need. No book has clearly and comprehensively explained the pitfalls and feasible steps that must be navigated one by one, accompanied by real examples distilled from practice. Although every business has a different entrepreneurial path, circumstances, challenges, and difficulties, common patterns exist—a way that can be followed. These patterns can guide training for people planning to start businesses. Do not therefore assume entrepreneurship is “mysterious” or “too different in every case to teach or learn.” It has principles that can be followed and practiced. Students learning entrepreneurial practice certainly accumulate knowledge, but more important is the craft: capabilities and a spirit distilled from entrepreneurs’ firsthand experiences and lessons. These should serve students throughout life and continue to develop, whether or not they later start their own businesses. Faculty-plus We need to think seriously about who should educate students in innovation and entrepreneurship. These are not academic teachers in the traditional sense, but coaches, advisers, and mentors supporting students’ career development. They may be retired business leaders, accomplished alumni, or credentialed professionals in a field. The opportunity is excellent now: many first-generation entrepreneurs are reaching retirement age. Universities should recruit those stepping back from frontline roles to teach. Many investors with extensive practical experience are also well suited to teaching the relationship between entrepreneurship and investment. Only a mutually beneficial entrepreneurial ecosystem can become self-sustaining and generate a virtuous cycle. Classroom-plus Complementing faculty-plus is curriculum-plus: encouraging practical activity beyond traditional classroom learning. Credit for real experience outside formal courses will become increasingly important, but such activities must be carefully designed and assessed. Curriculum-plus also offers businesses substantial opportunities. Companies can bring projects to campus, not as commissioned research for faculty, but as business challenges for students, with internal experts guiding them. Students earn credit by completing projects, and companies benefit from the research and development results. Curriculum-plus thus brings another win-win to the ecosystem. Developing innovative talent cannot rely on knowledge transmission alone. Universities must connect the logic of knowledge with the logic of action, unite teaching, learning, and doing, and combine hands-on work with thinking. Students should learn about action, and learn how to act, through action. A single-discipline model will not take innovative talent far. Universities should adopt an integrated approach that crosses boundaries, combines diverse perspectives, and connects openly. University-wide and cross-departmental collaboration should move beyond the business school’s comfort zone, allowing innovative students to develop through interdisciplinary exchange. Academic experts alone cannot make the development of innovative talent practical. Universities should bring together industry coaches, mentors, entrepreneurs-in-residence, and angel investors. Most courses should not be taught by university professors: however well versed in Chinese and Western scholarship, they cannot necessarily teach entrepreneurial skills well. Even where university rules require professors to lead a course, practical industry experts and grounded investors, businesspeople, and entrepreneurs with real commercial experience should do more of the teaching and sharing. This makes it more likely that students—young campus innovators—will encounter, understand, learn, and practice things not yet distilled into formal knowledge or theory. University entrepreneurship education is often less about “lecturing” than about examining decisions and learning from experience. Without faculty-plus, it can easily become theory about theory, detached from practice. Alongside academic professors, universities need professors of practice who contribute effectively to developing talent. Further experimentation is urgently needed, particularly in engineering, business, and other disciplines that lose their grounding when separated from practice. Developing innovative talent must not become so absorbed in busy appearances and activities that it forgets education. In entrepreneurship education, projects are the vehicle and activities the means; running through them are leadership, creativity, thinking, execution, and even education in students’ self-management. The educational impact should be judged by whether young people become self-aware, willing, proactive, capable, and intrinsically motivated to innovate, undertake ventures, and change the status quo themselves. These qualities benefit them throughout life, whatever work they later do and whatever positions they hold. Entrepreneurship education is not just about how many unicorns a university produces or how much investment and market value it creates. Its significance goes far beyond that. Focusing only on short-term results can encourage efficient but overly utilitarian approaches. Universities must preserve education’s essence and deliberately move slowly as educators within entrepreneurship’s fast pace: step back, be patient, and refrain from intervening while getting the objectives, incentives, ecosystem, and culture right. These foundations have far more long-term value than chasing competition rankings or doing things for students, and better reflect the proper role of education and educators. As universities face the AI era, where should they challenge fixed assumptions and rebuild to find their second growth curve? Reflection and experimentation in entrepreneurship education may offer ideas and clues. The future of universities also lies in entrepreneurship. #北京清華大學經管學院教授楊斌 --- Robin: “Universities must transform in the AI era, and the best strategy is to develop their entrepreneurship education systems actively. Not every student has to start a company, but entrepreneurship involves discovering problems and solving them hands-on. Entrepreneurship education can create an entirely new university education system for the future. The best universities will be those with the most grounded entrepreneurship education and the most complete entrepreneurial ecosystems.”