Experience is the Best Teacher: Apprenticeship Based Learning in Entrepreneur Development

Abstract

In the current study on entrepreneurship education, lecturers, structured seminars, and individual written assignments are used to describe two major entrepreneurship programs and courses. The majority of these latter courses are instructor-led, with little student interaction. From a more contemporary perspective, it is critical to experiment with and learn from one’s own experiences in order to educate entrepreneurs. As a result, more innovative approaches to education are gradually emerging, including project-based, action-based, and apprenticeship-based learning. Several institutions have launched entrepreneurial apprenticeship-based learning programs in the last few years, primarily for management students. Due to Malaysia’s lack of structure and credit opportunities, entrepreneurial apprenticeships at public universities remain uncommon and thus under-researched. Thus, the contribution’s study topic is how program stakeholders can organize apprenticeship-based learning and the effect this has on graduates’ readiness to start their own businesses. Thus, the technique used in this study is to conduct a review of the current literature on entrepreneurial learning in order to gain a better understanding of the entrepreneurial apprenticeship-based learning component of the 2u2i program. Second, the case of an entrepreneurial apprenticeship program for graduates near University Malaysia Kelantan, a public university with a strong entrepreneurial cluster, is examined to gain insight into the impact of apprenticeship on entrepreneurship education in general and non-business subjects in particular. For this purpose, a case study was created based on interviews with graduates and mentors. Overall, the results will serve as a model for entrepreneurial education and training in a university setting, which will benefit those interested in developing entrepreneurship education course concepts.