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

founded between 1901 and 1990. The largest group (23 HEI) are rather young HEI, founded
after 1990, among them many universities of applied sciences (18). One might expect that the
majority of these 23 HEI were founded in the Eastern part of Germany, but only 10 of theses
young HEI are located in the Eastern part of the country.
The size of the HEI in our sample, expressed as total number of students enrolled in the
winter term 2006-2007, varies between 300 and 47,500. In the group of small HEI (12) with
up to 3,000 students are many private schools (including the two business schools) with few
but specialized programs, often in the field of business, economics, and information
technology – of course including aspects of entrepreneurship. One third of the HEI in our
sample (16) are medium sized with more than 3000 and up to 10,000 students. In this group
only one HEI is a university, the rest are universities of applied sciences. Finally, there are
many large HEI in our data set (21) with more than 10,000 students enrolled. In this category
we find predominantly universities, technical universities (all three), and only two universities
of applied sciences.
Figure 2 General characteristics of HEI
Formation of University (HEI) Number of enrolled students
Source: IWH
Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage
Until 1900 10 20,4% Up to 3000 12 24,5%
1901 - 1990 16 32,7% 3001 - 10000 16 32,7%
After 1990 23 46,9% Above 10000 21 42,9%
Total 49 100,0% Total 49 100,0%
2.2. Entrepreneurship chairs
Together, the 49 HEI in our survey have 54 active entrepreneurship chairs. 6 Only five of
the professors are women (9%), which is fairly below the already low share of female
professors in Germany (14% on average). 7
Nearly half of the entrepreneurship chairs (25) are “Stiftungsprofessuren”.
“Stiftungprofessur” means that a newly established professorship is initially financed
externally (not by the HEI), for example through a company, a foundation, or other private or
6 In two cases the entrepreneurship chair is a Honorarprofessor (honorary professor). Honorary professor is a
title awarded to people that have given lectures at a particular university for several years while working
somewhere else (they usually give one lecture or seminar each semester).
7 http://www.bmbf.de/pub/zukunftswerkstatt_deutschland.pdf
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