Contributing Editor's Feature

Abstract

“How should we think about entrepreneurship education?” What kinds of courses and, possibly, programs should be developed at different kinds of educational institutions? These questions have been debated, sometimes hotly, during the 1980s. Of course, the debate on these questions is far from over. Gerhard Plaschka and Harold Welsch continue the dialogue as we enter the 1990s. Their contribution is significant. It involves nothing less than the construction of a road map for finding your way through the myriad course and program options that now confront teachers of entrepreneurship. Plaschka and Welsch start their paper with an excellent history of entrepreneurial education, supplemented by an extensive bibliography, examples of early programs, lists of key research publications and the 20 plus professional and authority-based organizations that impact the field. New teachers to the field will find this background particularly useful. Both old and new professors should find the conceptual part of the paper insightful and useful. Here the authors present two simple yet elegant frameworks for teachers to determine the general kinds of courses/programs they'd like to develop for their specific institutional environments. I should add these aren't conceptual approaches that the authors just invented out of thin air. Actually, they are heuristics grounded in a decade or more of experience realized by many professors. The authors have built upon the past … not ignored it … as they look to the future.