INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN CHINESE UNIVERSITIES: LEADERSHIP AND ADMINISTRATIVE PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

Innovation and entrepreneurship education has become a strategic component of talent development in Chinese universities, linking educational reform with innovation-driven growth, graduate development, and regional renewal. Its effectiveness, however, depends less on isolated courses or competitions than on institutional leadership and coherent administration. This conceptual and policy review examines how university leaders can organize innovation and entrepreneurship education as an inclusive, academically grounded, and externally connected educational system. It synthesizes Chinese policy documents and recent research concerning university-wide entrepreneurship education, teacher capability, student development, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and program evaluation. The analysis identifies leadership responsibilities in mission alignment, curriculum integration, organizational design, faculty development, experiential learning, industry-government collaboration, incubation support, resource allocation, student protection, and evidence-informed quality assurance. Persistent challenges include symbolic compliance, fragmented ownership, uneven institutional capacity, weak integration with disciplines, insufficiently prepared instructors, competition-centered activity, unequal participation, short-term performance metrics, commercialization pressure, and regional disparities. The article proposes an administrative architecture built around shared educational purpose, distributed leadership, cross-functional coordination, staged student pathways, professional support for teachers and mentors, responsible partnerships, transparent resource governance, and balanced evaluation of value, process, and results. Implementation is organized as a cycle of diagnosis, co-design, protected experimentation, institutionalization, and renewal. The central argument is that Chinese universities should treat innovation and entrepreneurship education as a long-term capability for creating educational, social, and economic value, not merely as a mechanism for producing start-ups or competition awards.