Entrepreneurial Education in Germany Jutta Günther, Ilka Ritter IWH ...

The university was originally founded in 1946 as college for education on initiative of the
British. Precisely, the British pursued a policy to contribute by means of teacher training to
the creation of a new democratic tradition in Germany. In 1978 the institute of education of
the Federal State of Lower Saxony became an independent university, authorized to award
academic doctorate and postdoctoral degrees. In the year of 1989, the institution was renamed
from PH Lüneburg to form the University Lüneburg. Later, Lower Saxony’s state government
decided to merge the university with the University of Applied Science Nordostniedersachsen
in effort to establish a single and full-encompassing institution of higher education for the city
of Lüneburg. Both institutions were joined as of 2005 and operated under the university’s
name, University of Lüneburg. The thereby established institution serves particularly as
model-university for the Bologna implementation. Recently, the university experienced a
further renaming to the abovementioned name Leuphana accompanied by a far-reaching
realignment of the institution, its study model and lecturing. In particular, as of October 2007
an innovative undergraduate program leading to the Leuphana Bachelor is offered at the
newly created Leuphana College. In brief, the College arranges the Leuphana Bachelor
according to 11 thematic focus areas, which may be selected as Major, and are either
complemented or accentuated by an individually chosen Minor allowing for traditional as
well as exceptional study profiles. On top, all students are educated within a Leuphana
semester in concern of scientific attitude as well as methodology. In the framework of the
mandatory complementary-studies, multidisciplinary thinking as well as competences beyond
particular expertise shall be developed and encouraged. The Graduate College, offering
Master and Doctorate programs, and a Professional School providing further educating
courses of study will complement the Leuphana College in the near future.
Besides, the university occupies since 2002 a chair for entrepreneurship, which has in the
meantime been highly appraised by rankings of entrepreneurial education chairs. Particularly,
the prominent ranking of the University of Regensburg 19 placed the chair on the top position
in 2005 and in the top fifteen in 2003.
The Chair
The chair for entrepreneurship (“Stiftungslehrstuhl für Gründungsmanagement”) at the
Leuphana University Lüneburg is as abovementioned occupied since 2002. Yet, such
professorship was envisioned early before. Already in the end of the 1990s, the Sparkasse
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Cp. Schmude, Uebelacker (2005) „Vom Studenten zum Unternehmer: Welche Universität bietet die besten
Chancen?“ Ranking 2005. Universität Regensburg, Wirtschaftsgeographie und Tourismusforschung., p. 44.
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