Students climbing the entrepreneurial ladder: Does university internationalization pay off?

Abstract

The entrepreneurial university is emerging as a new archetype of higher education institution that fosters knowledge generation and transfer, contributes to local development and empowers individuals in fastchanging markets. Many institutional, strategic and organizational factors have been discussed as components or contingencies of the process that makes universities more entrepreneurial. Yet we miss an understanding of the contribution that internationalization, crucial strategy for university competitiveness, can provide to such process. Our study addresses this gap, by looking at the effect of university internationalization on students' progressive engagement in entrepreneurship. We do so by studying internationalization along each of the three university institutional missions (teaching, research and third mission). Based on multilevel analysis on a sample of 25,855 university students across 130 European universities, our findings indicate that university internationalization matters, and with different mechanisms along the three missions; in fact, the effect of internationalization is both direct and indirect as it increases students' human capital but also enhances the impact of traditional university support and training mechanisms in favor of students' entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurial universities: emerging models in the new social and economic landscape

“…According to Minola et al (2016), several strategical and organizational issues have been discussed in the transformation process of making universities more entrepreneurial. However, the role of internationalization has been misunderstood in the academic debate of emerging universities models (Knight 2015).…”

“…This issue plays a particular interest in the current socioeconomic scenario because the contribution of internationalization is crucial for the competitiveness of each type of organization (Knight 2004). Adopting the basis of internationalization theory and using a multilevel analysis with data from 25,855 students enrolled in 130 European Universities, Minola et al (2016) analyze the effect of university internationalization on students' progressive engagement in entrepreneurship, as well as, along the core entrepreneurial university missions (teaching, research, and socio-economic contribution). These authors found that the internationalization strategy has a positive direct effect on the European students' level of engagement in entrepreneurship, as well as, acts as a moderator of the relationship between entrepreneurial university' supports and the students' level of engagement in entrepreneurship.…”

Entrepreneurial education and learning at universities: exploring multilevel contingencies

“…Since our sample is made up of individual-level observations, which are clustered within countries, we follow a multi-level mixed-effects regression approach (both random and fixed effects) (Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal 2008). In EE, research multilevel estimation has been used for example by Walter and Dohse (2012) and Minola, Donina, and Meoli (2016) who collected individual level and regional/country level data to study EE and students' entrepreneurship.…”

“…7. Like in the present article, Minola, Donina, and Meoli (2016) operationalize EE as the count of 14 different initiatives offered to students to investigate the effects on students' entrepreneurial behaviour. 8.…”

Internationalization as Investment for Higher Education Institutions: Introducing a Framework to Enhance Investment in Internalization Practices

“…As Daniels (2013) points out, drive for internationalization in higher education is not without its challenges and potential for conflict among a wide range of local and global stakeholders with divergent motivations and perspectives. Higher education institutes (HEIs) have assertive reasons to invest in internationalization activities as it can lead to attain higher earnings, goodwill and competitive advantages in global market (Minola, T., Donina, D., & Meoli, M., 2016).…”