Powell, B. c. (2013). Dilemmas in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy, Journal of Entrepreneurship Education, vol. 16, pp.99–112

Having a structured environment is easier for both the entrepreneurship educators and students, but it creates an artificial academic environment that bears little resemblance to the uncertain and even chaotic environment within which entrepreneurs must operate. This will undermine students’ entrepreneurial training and can lead to inaccurate perceptions of entrepreneurial careers.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding if the learning environment should be more unstructured or not. 

Giving realistic feedback to entrepreneurship students will help them address their weaknesses but this may affect their self-efficacy and confidence in starting a business. 

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding how much honest feedback they should give to their students.

Entrepreneurship education needs to be anchored in real world environments (Edelman, Manolova, & Brush, 2008), but university-level education is generally less vocational.

Entrepreneurship educators can cover practical topics to better prepare students for an entrepreneurial career and lower the threshold for starting their first business, but it is difficult for an instructor to be well-versed in all of domains of practical entrepreneurship knowledge.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding if their teaching should be more practical or universal. 

Entrepreneurs often copy the success of others. Imitation is an important, valid, and (usually) ethical technique employed by entrepreneurs. But the risk for entrepreneurs in imitating the success of others is that they may not fully understand how that success was achieved.

Students generally do not have a full understanding of that which they are copying. Unlike entrepreneurs, they do not have access to “real world” feedback to guide trial and error learning.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding how much to encourage and facilitate imitation.

Entrepreneurship educators face a dilemma in deciding whether or not to encourage students to become entrepreneurs.

If entrepreneurship educators encourage all students to become entrepreneurs, then they may direct some students to careers that are not right for them.