Evaluation of Entrepreneurial-Innovative University Conditions and Activities from Students’ Point of View in the Context of Industry 4.0

Abstract

One of the issues frequently encountered in the digitalization of higher education is the transformation of universities to the University 4.0 with the Industry 4.0. University 4.0 refers to the characteristics that universities must have in the Industry 4.0 era. The adaptation of the workforce that will be most affected by the Industry 4.0 process and training it for the new competency needs will be carried out by universities and research centers to a great extent. The evaluation of the studies to be carried out within this framework in a wide range, not only in the fields of engineering but also in the fields of social sciences, medicine and even law, will accelerate the integration process of the Industry 4.0 at universities. In this way, with the change of the objectives and learning outcomes of the academic programs developed based on competency, it is naturally expected that the industry will have an impact on the educational programs and techniques. As a requirement of competition, state authorities care about the role of universities in entrepreneurship and have serious expectations. Public authorities support and promote universities in this area significantly. It is observed that universities have recently put forward their entrepreneurial and innovative university feature in marketing activities. However, how much are the students who are the real target group of the universities taken into consideration in the university entrepreneurship ecosystem? The questions such as “How can a university be measured and assessed as an entrepreneurial-innovative university?” have become a subject to be studied in the field of higher education. While looking for answers to these questions, evaluation of entrepreneurial-innovative university conditions and activities from the university students’ point of view in the context of Industry 4.0 and University 4.0 emerged as an important requirement. The aim of this methodological study is to develop a tool to measure the internal environmental conditions and activities of the university students and entrepreneurial-innovative university based on Koyuncuoglu and Tekin (2019)’s Entrepreneurial University Model. For the study, a sample was used consisting of 528 students from Selçuk University Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences and Konya Technical University Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, in Konya Province in Turkey. Content validity, construct validity and reliability studies were conducted at the stage of development of the Entrepreneurial-Innovative University Conditions Scale. Data were analyzed on the computer using SPSS and LISREL package programs. According to the results of the explanatory factor analysis (EFA), 31-item and three-dimensional Entrepreneurial-Innovative University Conditions Scale was developed. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the scale was calculated as.95 and the explanatory percentage was calculated as 51.29%. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), it was seen that the scale had good fit values (X2/df: 2.47, RMSEA:.075, CFI:.96, NNFI:.96). It was concluded that the scale developed in this research is a valid and reliable measurement tool that can be used to measure the internal environmental conditions and activities of the Entrepreneurial-Innovative universities. It can be said that the entrepreneurial-innovative university conditions scale will be important for the universities which want to improve their student-oriented entrepreneurial-innovative features, public authorities and for the entire economy in macro level. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.