Summary
We report on an initiative between global firms and universities worldwide to empower university students to teach ethical and sustainable business principles in their communities. The program is entitled Students In Free Enterprise, commonly known as SIFE. These community-based entrepreneurship educational projects span the globe, and we document significant effectiveness, both for the community recipients and students. We conclude that the SIFE empowerment program can be effective in highly developed industrialized nations such as Germany, the United States, South Korea and Australia, as well as in developing countries such as China, Malaysia, and India.
See the full content of this document
Extract
Entrepreneurship Teaching in Action: The Effects of Early Empowerment
INTRODUCTION
There is evidence of a strong correlation between educational level achieved and high income over a lifetime (De Faoite, Henry, Johnston, & Van der Sijde, 2003), and we ground our efforts in entrepreneurship education in the assumption that taught skills will translate into greater job opportunities. However, not all education is immediately transferable to useable practical skills, and literature has described education institutions and business organizations as two isolated learning arenas (Leitch & Harrison, 1999). It is of interest to investigate a program where the emphasis is on self-generated practical managerial skills of students, through a program of empowering these students to perform challenging community education projects. The desire for a shift from classroom-based teaching to facility action learning has been widely expressed for entrepreneurship education (Shepherd & Douglas, 1996; Formica, 2002; Gorman, Hanlon, & King, 1997). We are curious if such action-learning approaches can develop suitable skill in a discipline where many elements are creative.Action learning has been underpinning an increasi...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
