Examining the differences in the grade point average (GPA) for engineering students enrolled in entrepreneurial education programs

Undergraduate students in engineering continue to gain exposure to entrepreneurial programming through different entrepreneurship education programs (EEPs) initiated in higher education institutions. While traditionally, entrepreneurship education has been initiated and housed in business schools; recent programmatic offerings have increased in the engineering schools. Through various offerings (e.g., full-credit courses and seminars), engineering EEPs focus on developing entrepreneurially-minded engineering graduates to prepare them to succeed in their future career roles. While research in entrepreneurship education has demonstrated the positive impact of EEPs, there is a lack of understanding about students who enroll in these EEPs. Specifically, because students often self-select into different EEP programmatic offerings, differences in students who participate in the different programmatic offerings (i.e., business, engineering, seminar EEPs) needs research examination. This exploratory research paper addresses this gap in the literature. It examines the research question: what is the difference (if any) in grade point average (GPA) between engineering students who enroll in different EEPs? The data source includes GPA and enrollment records for 6156 undergraduate engineering students who enrolled in EEPs at a large research university located in the U.S. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the difference in GPA between students who enrolled in engineering EEPs (N = 1204), business EEPs (N = 2923), and EEP seminar (N = 2029). The ANOVA results identify statistically significant differences in mean GPA between the three groups. Post hoc tests show statistically significant differences in GPA between seminar and engineering groups, and seminar and business groups. No statistically significant differences were found between students enrolled in engineering EEPs and business EEPs. The results' implications and future work directions are discussed in the paper.