Universities with a market orientation, through transfer of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship activities, corresponding to what is known as “the third mission,” face several managerial challenges and tensions, among them, organizing professors in terms of activities and incentives, to balance their dedication to teaching, research, and the marketing of knowledge. In the aim to understand the open and equal access to learning in school management, orientation toward the third mission of some professors may have an impact on their students’ academic performance insofar as they may put greater or lesser effort in educating. Literature and empirical studies evaluating the relationship between market orientations through entrepreneurship with the academic quality of professional education are scant. Using 114 higher education institutions (HEI) in Colombia as a sample and logistic and Poisson regression, we found that universities with higher undergraduate education quality results also have higher participation in entrepreneurial contests in a significant relationship. This suggests that universities that have good quality in academic education of students in their professional training are best prepared to assume the third mission.
Part of the book: Open and Equal Access for Learning in School Management