2021 University Entrepreneurship Survey: Executive Summary
Throughout the tumult of recent years, the University of Rochester lauds that the willingness to share information and best practices is still strong among entrepreneurship educators. The survey, distributed first in 2017, has become a mainstay in the Ain Center’s schedule, gathering data to help colleagues throughout the world create stronger entrepreneurship offerings in colleges and universities. After distributions in 2017 and 2019, 2021 marked the third iteration, adapted to reflect the changes of an ever-evolving field.
Building on momentum from a successful survey in 2019 and conference presentation in 2020, Rochester polled hundreds of entrepreneurship educators around the globe. In 2021, responses from 214 individuals at 176 institutions were collected and analyzed. Though this is a drop in the number of respondents from 2019, assumptions can be made regarding online fatigue and adjustments to responsibilities given the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused global disruption throughout 2020 and beyond. (Full reports and conference presentations of past surveys can be found on the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship’s website: http://www.rochester.edu/aincenter/survey.)
In 2021, the survey garnered data on entrepreneurship center and program demographics, faculty and staff information, center operations, degree programs and curricular offerings, and impact of the pandemic on entrepreneurial learning across institutions. A distinction between entrepreneurship center and program was adopted to clarify co-curricular and curricular offerings, which helped rectify misunderstandings that clouded the 2017 responses. Further, this iteration of the survey also asked to which center individuals belonged, as past data showed that some universities have multiple innovation departments.
The University of Rochester is thrilled to be the conduit for this data sharing and the goal is to provide timely information to center and program leaders, as well as to draw longitudinal conclusions as the data amasses over multiple years. The knowledge derived from the data can serve as an excellent reference point for those establishing, growing, and sustaining entrepreneurship programs in higher education.