MAJOR UNRESOLVED ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION

Since this is a Keynote Address and not an academic paper, this talk is conceptual and meant to be a stimulus for conversation throughout this Conference. The usual academic trappings such as an extensive list of references will be forgone and any claim to academic rigor is renounced. This is my chance to argue that, contrary to last year's Coleman White Paper presenter, the entrepreneurship legitimacy debate rages on and that we as entrepreneurship educators have much work to do to deliver on our ideology and promises. I sincerely thank the Coleman Foundation for giving me this chance to rant and rave. This presentation begins with the premise that high quality education is about change, hopefully for the betterment on the individual student and also for society as a whole. It is also argued that the domain of entrepreneurship education is creation - as Venkataraman states it "how opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services are discovered, created, and exploited." This creation is the opposite of oppressive bureaucracy. Entrepreneurial creation is founded in freedom!