Entrepreneur-Friendly Universities Index and The Development of A Model

It is observed that the understanding of neo-liberal education has transformed universities into student centered institutions aiming for an education consistent with global development, generating an entrepreneurial and creative human resource and accordingly developing consistent education programs. In this context, it attracts attention that measurements are conducted to determine whether universities have an entrepreneurial structure. Although these measurements have various objectives, the primary aim is to constitute a competitive, entrepreneurial and innovative university governance system that meets the expectations of all stakeholders and to maintain the development of this system. Correspondingly, efforts for creating Entrepreneurial and Innovative University Indexes that will meet the expectations of all stakeholders and contribute to the development of this system have been on the rise. It can be said that there is a general consensus regarding the effectiveness of measuring university entrepreneurship. In Turkey, only one index named as the Entrepreneurial and Innovative University Index developed and implemented by TUBITAK for this purpose has been used since 2012. The presence of different measurement tools in this regard would be scientifically useful. Based on this thought, the aim of the present study is to develop a new index regarding university entrepreneurship. At the scale development stage, the three-phase and ten-step approach existing in the literature was adopted. The statements that were considered to be included in the scale were created in accordance with the literature and the opinions of experts. At this stage, a draft form consisting of 53 items was obtained. This draft index was sent to experts from the field and their opinions were asked. After obtaining the expert opinions, a Content Validity Index (CVI) study was conducted and 50 items were found to be left on the candidate scale. For construct validity, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin coefficient and the Bartlett tests were performed before the factor analysis, and the result of the Bartlett test was (P .000) and the KMO value was found as .914. The candidate scale was subjected to an exploratory factor analysis and a structure composed of 47 items and 5 factors was obtained as the result of the EFA conducted using Varimax rotation. The created scale explained the 73.875% of the total variance. For the statements on the scale, the lowest item factor load was .46 and the highest item factor load was .87. The Cronbach s Alpha value of the entire scale was measured as .986. The Cronbach s Alpha values for the dimensions varied between .983 and .830. In conclusion, it was determined that the scale was a valid and reliable measurement tool.