Entrepreneurial Transformation Strategies for Sustainable Private Universities
Abstract
Private universities face increasing challenges arising from financial constraints, growing competition, and changing societal expectations, requiring them to adopt entrepreneurial transformation strategies to ensure long-term sustainability. While the entrepreneurial university concept has been widely discussed, practical strategic frameworks for guiding transformation in private universities, particularly in developing countries, remain limited. This study aims to develop a strategic decision-making framework for transforming private universities into entrepreneurial universities and to identify the priority factors, actors, objectives, and strategies supporting sustainable institutional development. The study employs the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP), using expert judgments from seven higher education stakeholders representing six private universities and one government institution in Indonesia. The results indicate that leadership and governance are the most influential transformation factors, followed by financial and funding resources, entrepreneurial culture, human resources, and infrastructure and technology. Universities emerge as the primary actors driving transformation, while improving graduate quality is identified as the highest-priority objective. Among the alternative strategies, strengthening human resources ranks first, followed by enhancing collaboration, integrating entrepreneurship into the curriculum, and promoting innovation-based research and commercialization. These findings provide a systematic framework for supporting entrepreneurial transformation in private universities and contribute to the organizational change literature by offering practical guidance for strengthening institutional sustainability, competitiveness, and societal impact through leadership, human resource development, collaboration, and innovation.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Indah Kusuma Hayati, Muhammad Syamsul Maarif, Illah Sailah, Nimmi Zulbainarni

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