Becoming an Entrepreneurial University through Role Transitions and Contextualization–The Case of the University of Applied Sciences

How do higher education institutions (HEIs) make strategic transitions aimed at embedding entrepreneurship education in their education programs and curricula? This paper studies how the process of becoming an entrepreneurial university unfolds over time in HEIs as a response to societal and institutional pressures and ambitions of integrating entrepreneurship education into core missions and program activities. Through an in-depth qualitative case study of historical documents and retrospective follow-up timeline interviews, we map the development of events related to curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurship activities over more than a decade in a Danish university of applied sciences in which an entrepreneurial university discourse is present and easily observable. The study demonstrates the variety and range of strategic initiatives taken under the broad heading of “the entrepreneurial university”. Through a theoretical lens of role transitions, we show how curricular and extracurricular educational practices are transformed and contextualized through processes of replication, determination, and exploration to fit, translate, and adjust entrepreneurship education into the setting of the university of applied sciences.