engleski

The concept of entrepreneurial university and potential obstacles for its implementation in Croatia

This paper presents an overview of existing literature and research concerning the concept of entrepreneurial university: prerequisites for the transformation of traditional universities in to entrepreneurial, trends and good practice examples, and challenges in pursuit of entrepreneurial university. A special emphasis is put on the academic staff work overload as a threat to the concept of entrepreneurial university in the context of seven Croatian universities. Namely, with nine faculties performing study programs in economics as their integral parts. The degree of academic staff overload is analyzed by means of the following indicators: teaching overload indicator, and ratio between the number of academic staff and students. The research shows that, in most of the observed faculties, academic staff is overloaded with teaching. Although there is insufficient numerical data that would confirm it, it is assumed that this is due to the large ratio of academic staff to students. The mean ratio at the faculties is higher by 53.40% than the provided one, and that is 1:30, in the first year of the observed period (2009/2010-2011/2012). However, the results show a decreasing trend in the ratio between the number of academic staff and students. The calculation of the mean ratio decrease rate per faculties shows that within the observed period of three consecutive academic years, every year it decreased by 8.28%. Should the falling trend continue at the average decrease rate in the years to follow, not earlier than in the academic year 2014/2015 the ratio smaller than 1:30 could be expected. One of the main stakeholders in transformation of traditional universities into entrepreneurial is certainly academic staff that is and should be the main carrier and promoter of this concept and as such should be recognized by the decision makers.

entrepreneurial university ; good practice examples ; HE trends ; Croatian context ; obstacles for implementation ; academic staff work overload

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