Recommendations for entrepreneurship at universities Results Report Lower Saxony University Entrepreneurship Monitoring 2022

The report on the results of the “Niedersachsen Hochschul-Entrepreneurship Monitoring 2022” offers an in-depth insight into the entrepreneurship transformation of the state of Lower Saxony. In addition, it provides key recommendations for action to strengthen Lower Saxony’s university entrepreneurship. The report is available for download after registration.

The Entrepreneurship Monitoring represents 15 of Lower Saxony’s 28 universities and approximately 173,000 of the state’s 208,000 students. The aim of the project was to record entrepreneurship developments in Lower Saxony with the help of a scientifically sound monitoring system. This resulted in nine central recommendations for action to improve university entrepreneurship in Lower Saxony.

In addition to increasing the scope of curricular entrepreneurship teaching, the concretisation or formulation of an entrepreneurship strategy is recommended in order to ultimately advance the holistic anchoring of entrepreneurship at universities. This also includes a uniform design of incentives for professors. Strengthening personnel in the area of entrepreneurship promotion and intensifying cooperation between the universities are further recommendations. In addition, the creation of a legal framework and a statewide, regular reporting on start-up activities are recommended for Lower Saxony.

The report compares the participating large (over 10,000 students), medium-sized (5,000 to 10,000 students) and small (less than 5,000 students) universities in Lower Saxony. According to their own statements, the universities were evaluated in the categories entrepreneurship teaching, entrepreneurship governance, operational entrepreneurship support, start-up activity and research-based entrepreneurship.

In entrepreneurship teaching, for example, in terms of the relative reach of entrepreneurship courses (participants/student numbers in %) as well as in entrepreneurship teaching diversity (score from topic coverage and diversity of teaching formats, max. 9 points), Leuphana University Lüneburg is the leader (11.61% and 9 points). While the alliance of TU Braunschweig and Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences is tied for entrepreneurship teaching diversity, the alliance is only ranked 8th (0.98%) in the relative coverage of entrepreneurship courses and thus comes to an average rank of 4.5 in entrepreneurship teaching.

The results report was written as part of the research project “Niedersachsen Entrepreneurship Monitoring”. It is commissioned by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and is aimed equally at politicians, universities, business and start-ups in Lower Saxony.