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Some scholars assert that entrepreneurship has attained "considerable" legitimacy. Others assert that it "is still fighting" for complete acceptance. This study explores the question, extrapolating from studies of an "elite effect" in which the publications of the highest ranked schools differ from other research-intensive schools. The most elite business schools in the USA, but not the UK, are found to allocate significantly more publications to mathematically sophisticated "analytical" fields such as economics and finance, rather than entrepreneurship and other "managerial" fields. The US elites do not look down upon entrepreneurship as such. They look down upon journals that lack high mathematics content. Leading entrepreneurship journals, except Small Business Economics Journal (SBEJ), are particularly lacking. The conclusion argues that SBEJ can help the field's legitimacy, but that other journals should not imitate analytical paradigms. Plain English Summary Academic snobs shun entrepreneurship journals. A goal for snobs is to exhibit superiority over others. For business professors, one way to do this is with mathematically sophisticated, analytical publications. Entrepreneurship journals, Small Business Economics excepted, do this relatively infrequently. These journals focus on the lives, activities, and challenges of diverse entrepreneurs. In the USA, the most elite business schools, compared with not-quite elite business schools, allocate significantly more of their articles to the journals of analytical fields such as economics, and fewer to entrepreneurship journals. This pattern is not found in the UK, where elites may have other ways to signal superiority. These elites, who accommodate entrepreneurship researchers, could pioneer with outputs of both relevance and scholarly quality, through collaboration between their practice-based and research-based professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the 'network' and 'open innovation' paradigms by seeking to examine the factors associated with structural positioning within university–industry networks. Drawing upon a network analysis of knowledge-based ties held by universities across the regions of the UK, it is found that those universities with the most central positions (network centrality) within university–industry network structures also have high rates of relational involvement in activities such as spin-off generation and engagement in externally funded research projects. Some forms of activity, in particular intellectual property protection through patenting, are found to be negatively associated with centrality. Spatial location is largely found to be unrelated to the network centrality of universities. By utilising network centrality as one measure of the open innovation capability of universities, the paper indicates that a range of institutional characteristics and factors tend to either promote or limit the engagement of universities in open innovation practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK National Student Survey (NSS) represents a major resource, never previously used in the economics literature, for understanding how the market signal of quality in higher education works. In this study, we examine the determinants of the NSS overall student satisfaction score across eleven subject areas for 121 UK universities between 2007 and 2010. Using a unique panel data set and estimating random effects and fixed effects models, we find large differences in NSS scores across subjects and across different groups of universities, which implies that the raw scores should not be used as a method of ranking. Additionally, the student–staff ratio and student employability are strong influencers of student satisfaction; both of which suggest that a policy which places emphasis on student support, personal development and employability skills will yield an advantage in the higher education marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When university Departments are under pressure to improve the assessed quality of their research and teaching in several different directions simultaneously, questions arise as to the nature of the corresponding feasible set and the shape of its frontier. When quality is judged by reference to grades whose precise thresholds are subject to stochastic uncertainties, both convex and nonconvex regions of the frontier of the feasible set may be present. The appropriateness of deploying standard empirical techniques of frontier estimation is then called into question in evaluating the relative effectiveness of individual Departments and their scope for improvements. The empirical results of frontier estimation, here applied to UK university Departments of Economics, are shown to be sensitive to the choice of nonparametric frontier technique deployed, with Free Disposal Hull analysis providing an alternative estimation technique that can allow for both convex and nonconvex regions of the possibility frontier. Issues of the endogeneity of the resources available to Departments are also raised in this applied context, with a need to incorporate into the effectiveness analysis the potential feedback effects of improved research and teaching quality upon the achievement possibility set. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]