Role of higher educational institutions in entrepreneurship education

India needs many entrepreneurs willing to make their businesses bigger in order to catch up with the pace of developed countries. Entrepreneurship education requires involvement of everyone— the government, society, and more so the educational institutions. Entrepreneurship Education (EE) in India's higher education system should facilitate to address major obstacles in the pursuit of national economic development and employment. The EE in the higher education system should, therefore, satisfy the need for entrepreneurship by: selecting, motivating, training and supporting. The following learning tools are useful in EE: business plans; student business startups; consultation with practicing entrepreneurs; computer simulations; behavioral simulations; interviews with entrepreneurs, environmental scans; “live” cases; field trips, and the use of videos and films.The present paper throughs light on the importance of Entrepreneurship education and the strategies to be adopted in various higher educational institutions. The objectives of this research paper are to: Examine and access the working of Entrepreneur Development cell in various higher education institutions. And To evaluate the role played by these institutions in promoting/developing the entrepreneurship among the students/learners.

The study is based on primary data. The Primary data is collected through structured questionnaires, Personal interviews and observations. The primary data was collected from 30 institutions (covering Universities, Professional Colleges, Management Schools and Autonomous/affiliated higher education institutions) in Hyderabad.Different statistical tools are used to analyze the primary data, such as percentages, association of attributes like chi-square test etc. The results revealed that there is need for improvement in Entrepreneurship education in almost all the higher education institutions and it is felt that EE must address the equivocal nature of business entry. To this end, the EE must include skill-building courses in negotiation, leadership, new product development, creative thinking and exposure to technology innovation. Other areas identified as important for EE include an awareness of entrepreneur career options; sources of venture capital; idea protection; ambiguity tolerance. The formation of an entrepreneurship culture is the prerequisite of a successful EE in India's higher education system. There is an immediate need for the institutions to have Collaborations with COWA, ALEAP, FAPPCI and NI-MSME. If the university students with high entrepreneurial potentials get proper training, they will have the best prospects for becoming “real” entrepreneurs and thus enabling our country to move towards sustainable development.