The internationalization of entrepreneurial education in Japan: an entrepreneurship ecosystem perspective

Fiona Sussan

Chapter 3 in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education, 2025, pp 48-70 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The number of foreign students pursuing higher education in Japan has increased in recent years since the Japanese Government (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, commonly known as MEXT) launched a 10-year “Top Global University Project,” commonly referred to as the Super Global University (SGU) initiative, in 2014. In this initiative, MEXT provided funding of about three-quarters of a billion US dollars for over ten years, offering financial support to selected Japanese universities to provide to foreign students to encourage recruitment. Parallel to this, entrepreneurship education at Japanese universities has also increased in the past decade, following a global trend and the Japanese government's urging of startups (MEXT, 2020). These two parallel phenomena resulted in the unintended and unexpected outcome of foreign students studying in these SGUs becoming interested in entrepreneurship – which might not have developed had they pursued higher education in their home countries. This chapter examines English-based entrepreneurship education in Japanese universities from an ecosystem perspective and explores the challenges and opportunities these universities face. Within the entrepreneurship education ecosystem framework, a human capital approach is used to address the knowledge offered by these institutions. This study collects publicly available data from 12 Type B private SGUs identified by MEXT, along with entrepreneurship courses and activities offered by these universities, in order to categorize them into three types (Fellnhofer, 2019) of entrepreneurship knowledge (cognition/mindset; know-how – skills, training; practical actions) offered to learners. The results of the analysis lead to a critical discussion of the role of English-based entrepreneurship education within Japan's entrepreneurial ecosystems at the macro level. This article concludes with implications for foreign students interested in studying higher education in Japan, faculty development and recruitment, and higher education policy makers.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial ecosystem; Entrepreneurship education ecosystems; Higher education; Human capital; Internationalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035307180
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