SA faces one of the most acute youth unemployment challenges in the world. More than six in 10 South Africans aged 15 to 24 are unemployed, according to Stats SA’s quarterly labour force survey for the first quarter of 2026.
Against this backdrop, entrepreneurship education has been promoted as a mechanism for economic development, innovation and job creation. It has expanded considerably across universities, technical and vocational education and training colleges, private higher education institutions, sector education and training authorities and government-supported enterprise development initiatives.
While this growth is encouraging, an important question remains: is it producing sustainable entrepreneurs, or merely producing entrepreneurship graduates?
Across SA, thousands of learners and students complete entrepreneurship-related programmes annually. Institutions report enrolment figures, completion rates and learner satisfaction scores. Yet far less attention is paid to whether these programmes actually result in business creation, employment generation and long-term entrepreneurial success, which raises a serious question about how entrepreneurship education is measured and evaluated.
What matters is whether graduates go on to create ventures, generate employment and contribute to broader economic outcomes; and whether the education they received had any meaningful role in making that happen.
The challenge is that many entrepreneurship programmes continue to prioritise classroom-based learning. Students often graduate with a sound understanding of business plans, marketing strategies, financial forecasting and opportunity recognition.
However, many have limited exposure to the practical realities of launching and sustaining a business in competitive markets, and a disconnect often emerges between entrepreneurial knowledge and practice.
Global evidence suggests that entrepreneurship education is most effective when embedded within broader entrepreneurial ecosystems. This requires students to engage in experimentation, opportunity identification, problem-solving and venture development within authentic learning environments.
Successful entrepreneurial ecosystems typically combine formal education with mentoring, incubation, industry engagement, networking opportunities and access to innovation infrastructure. These environments give aspiring entrepreneurs opportunities to test ideas, develop prototypes, receive expert feedback and refine business models before entering the market.
Research shows that experiential learning approaches improve entrepreneurial competencies, including innovation, resilience, adaptability and opportunity recognition, pointing to a clear conclusion: entrepreneurship education alone is insufficient. The ecosystem surrounding the learner is what determines the outcome.
SA’s entrepreneurial environment presents unique challenges. Entrepreneurs often face limited access to finance, regulatory barriers, infrastructure constraints and competitive market conditions. These realities require entrepreneurship education to extend beyond teaching students how to write business plans or understand entrepreneurial theory.
Instead, institutions must create environments where students can actively engage in innovation, enterprise development and entrepreneurial problem-solving. This means shifting from teaching entrepreneurship as a subject to facilitating it as an activity.
Some higher education institutions are beginning to recognise the value of ecosystem-based approaches that connect academic learning directly with enterprise development.
But despite these positive developments, a significant challenge remains: SA lacks a consistent framework for evaluating the outcomes of entrepreneurship education.
The future of entrepreneurship education should...be measured...by the number who successfully launch, sustain and grow businesses
— Dr Shaheen Khan
The future of entrepreneurship education should, therefore, be measured not by the number of individuals who complete programmes but by the number who successfully launch, sustain and grow businesses. This requires a shift in how entrepreneurship education is conceptualised, delivered and evaluated.
There are encouraging signs that institutions are acting on this, embedding experiential learning, entrepreneurial ecosystems and enterprise support into their offerings. The challenge now is to ensure that these initiatives are accompanied by robust outcome measurement frameworks capable of demonstrating genuine entrepreneurial impact.
Only then will SA be able to determine whether its substantial investment in entrepreneurship education is producing entrepreneurs who create sustainable value or merely graduates who understand entrepreneurship in theory.
- Dr Khan is a senior academic and programme coordinator at Regent Business School
