Are Entrepreneurial Educators the Key on Embedding Enterprise Skills Across the Curriculum? A Comparison Study Between Two Uk Universities

The aim of this paper is to present the findings of a comprehensive study of the “Elvis model” and the “E-Factor” competency model questionnaire administered to students of two UK universities. The purpose of this research paper is to measure the Entrepreneurial competency development of students and any entrepreneurial outcomes by presenting the findings of the two research studies completed by students of all disciplines at Liverpool John Moores University and Queen’s University Belfast. The authors have worked over a two year period at Liverpool John Moores Universities embedding entrepreneurial skills across the curriculum reaching over 17000 students and 150 degree programs included 300 members of staff as Enterprise educators. We compared the data with Professor Gibson’s previous work at Queens University Belfast where he embedded enterprise education in 116 pathways across all academic disciplines, reaching 11,000 students across the University leading to 1,100 students directly engaging in business activity over a 10 year period. A research questionnaire based on the “E-Factor” competency model was administered to students to test the “ELVIS model”. The results highlighted that the greater the number of staff involvement as Enterprise educators the higher the impact across the university. In addition, the students had improved their “E-Factor” score significantly as a result of the higher number of staff involvement and there were also many more start-ups started by those who had received curricular training. There was a direct correlation between the level of Entrepreneurial competence and the extent of their curricular Entrepreneurial learning. The more experiential the pedagogy the more impactful the Entrepreneurial Learning.