A comprehensive review of entrepreneurship course offerings in engineering programs

Entrepreneurship education is becoming increasingly important in engineering schools. This is a trend that started several years ago in the U.S. and is also spreading internationally. This trend appears to be due to the fact that engineers are responsible for providing solutions to enhance the quality of life for people worldwide and for facing the challenges related to that responsibility. As society develops we face new challenges, which call for varied and innovative approaches to solve these problems. This is further confirmed by the National Academy of Engineers' book titled "The Engineer of 2020", which the clearly discusses the changing role of the engineer in 2020 ⁷. This process of evolving as a profession cannot be achieved unless an entrepreneurial mindset is created amongst the engineers of 2020 and beyond. To foster this entrepreneurial mindset, engineering programs are undertaking various initiatives. However, there is no clear agreement regarding the entrepreneurship content that should be included for engineers. In this paper, the authors have done a comprehensive review of entrepreneurship course offerings in engineering programs. This includes analyzing whether the programs are offered by the engineering schools themselves or in partnership with a business school and what other offerings they have for their students in addition to course work. This enabled the authors to identify patterns about the required coursework that might be included in engineering programs. The authors make recommendations on how the current offerings can be improved to be able to create the entrepreneurial mindset for the engineering graduates.