Policies and Practices for Entrepreneurial Education: the Malaysian Experience.

Entrepreneurship education is considered one of the key instruments that increases the entrepreneurial attitudes of potential entrepreneurs. The Malaysian government has made tremendous efforts in promoting entrepreneurship education by improving the current policy on entrepreneurship education, providing various entrepreneurship programmes to increase the number of young entrepreneurs, and highlighting the need to empower entrepreneurship education among graduates of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs). This paper therefore aims to examine the achievements of the Strategic Plan on Entrepreneurship Development in Higher Education (2013-2015) on promoting entrepreneurial education in Malaysian HEIs. The achievements were measured through Key Performance Indicators that were developed by the Ministry of Education. Findings of this study noted that four out of six thrusts, including the first thrust, which is to empower the Entrepreneurship Centre in every HEI, the second thrust, which is to provide holistic and well-planned entrepreneurial education and programmes, the fourth thrust, which is to enhance the competency of HEIs‘ entrepreneurship trainers and facilitators, and the sixth thrust, which is to increase the effect of the implementation of HEIs‘ entrepreneurial education and development, have been successfully achieved. Meanwhile, the other two thrusts that include the third thrust, which is to empower entrepreneurial development programmes, and the fifth thrust, which is to provide a conducive environment and ecosystem for entrepreneurship development, have failed to be achieved. Therefore, it is important for the Ministry of Education and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to join hands in making sure that the current policies and programmes as well as the curriculum and content on entrepreneurship are improved.