Opportunities and contradictions: the policy paradox of entrepreneurial education and university-business engagement since 1960

This paper provides an analysis of why enterprise activity has so often been viewed as peripheral in higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United Kingdom (UK). Engagement between higher education and business by English universities had its origins in the establishment of 19th century civic universities and was reinforced during each of the World Wars, through to the 1960s. Understanding attitudes to enterprise and entrepreneurship education among conventional academics in UK universities since 1960 and especially since the 1970s, requires them to be placed within the complex set of forces shaping British industrial and education policy. This article explores how the combination of challenging economic conditions and political change from the 1960s to the 1990s helped shape attitudes within and outside universities to enterprise and entrepreneurship in often perverse ways.

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