Gelsenkirchen Declaration
on
Institutional Entrepreneurial Management and
Entrepreneurial Studies in Higher Education in Europe

1.	The International Expert Meeting on Institutional Entrepreneurial Management and Entrepreneurial Studies in Higher Education was organized by University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen (Fachhochschule Gelsenkirchen) and the European Centre for Higher Education (UNESCO-CEPES) in collaboration with Association of Universities and other Higher Education Institutions in Germany (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz - HRK) and the German Commission for UNESCO,
(4 - 7 December 2003, Gelsenkirchen, Germany), at a moment of important developments in the European higher education – at the system as well as at institutional level. The “new paradigm” in which the European higher education is going to function is foremost linked to the Bologna Process.

2.	The emergence of the European Higher Education Area and that of the European Research Area, provide higher education institutions with new opportunities to assert themselves both as teaching and research institutions which generate and transmit knowledge thus contributing to social and economic development and cohesion. Such a combined role may become increasingly possible once universities improve their management in order to become more entrepreneurial and include entrepreneurial studies in their curricula in order to train and to motivate students to become increasingly entrepreneurial in their future careers. 

Institutional Entrepreneurial Management

3.	The idea of “entrepreneurial university” implies the need to transform university managerial structures and functions. The new institutional management is based on:

•	professionalization of university management and staff coupled with 
	strong 	executive leadership;

•	diversification of income sources;

•	preservation of core academic values while assimilating and integrating new 	managerial, business-oriented and market-related practices;

•	closer contacts with business and community;

•	development of an entrepreneurial culture based on the spirit of innovation 	and enterprise through knowledge transfer, industrial spin-offs, continuing 	education, and various partnerships for fund-raising and alumni affairs;

•	integration of academic and research units by loosening the traditional 	disciplinary boundaries and developing project oriented activities that are 	more relevant to the new modes of knowledge production and application.

4.	Such changes would lead to a new and more dynamic identity of higher education institutions without betraying their core academic values. For the emerging knowledge-based economies and societies, a new type of university is emerging and the start-off regards both its management, which is to become ever more entrepreneurial, and its knowledge production and transmission functions, which should become more business oriented.

Entrepreneurial Studies

5.	In order for these developments to take stronger roots, student education should be expanded by including entrepreneurial studies. Such studies should provide for an integrative approach to discovery, learning, and intellectual entrepreneurship, so that each student, regardless of her or his disciplinary identity, would acquire an enterprising culture based on the need to take initiative and assume responsibilities that lead to job creation and wealth. Research and various postgraduate studies should be focused on entrepreneurship - defined as the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources currently controlled- on its knowledge, values and practices, thus potentially enlarging the pool of entrepreneurs and fostering research. 

6.	Whatever form entrepreneurial studies may take, the experiences acquired so far in various systems and institutions of higher education prove that they contribute widely to equip graduates to start up new businesses or to better understand how markets operate in knowledge-based economies.

Recommendations

7.	Being aware of the increasing importance of entrepreneurship in higher education in Europe and of its significance in meeting the goals of the Bologna Process, the participants in the International Expert Meeting:

•	recognize the need to find better ways of developing an institutional 	entrepreneurial management;

•	urge higher education institution to promote entrepreneurial studies;

•	stress the importance of building up partnerships between higher education 	units and public and private sectors.

8.         In order to encourage the development of entrepreneurship in higher education institutions and particularly of programmes focused on entrepreneurial studies, the participants welcome UNESCO-CEPES initiative to provide support for the establishment of UNESCO Chairs in Entrepreneurial Studies. 

						Gelsenkirchen, 6 December 2003