Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>The rising number of unemployed graduates worldwide has influenced higher education policy. University regulations now encourage not only job seekers but also job creators. In response to this global challenge, the Indonesian Government has implemented a policy on university entrepreneurship education. Using a case study at Nurul Iman College, this research aims to provide new insights and perspectives on the transformation of a religious-based higher education institution into an entrepreneurial college, through the integration of policy instruments, institutional structures and the business ecosystem. Conventional models of entrepreneurial colleges, which are generally economically oriented, tend to prioritise a linear relationship between academic functions, business profit and innovation. Such models often overlook the dynamic interactions between governance, existing institutional values and recursive policy processes. To address this gap, a qualitative case study approach is employed to analyse how entrepreneurship education is embedded at Nurul Iman College. Drawing on the concept of institutional differentiation and policy feedback theory, this study demonstrates that entrepreneurial transformation is driven not only by curriculum reforms and stand-alone programmes, but by the systemic integration of policy design, organisational governance and productive business units. These findings reveal that university-owned business units serve a dual function as 1) economic drivers and 2) experience- and trust-based learning platforms that mediate the relationship between institutional policy and student learning outcomes. This study also identifies a recursive feedback mechanism whereby implementation outcomes in the form of business performance and student entrepreneurial engagement continuously inform policy refinement and institutional adaptation. Taken together, these findings challenge the conventional assumption that entrepreneurial higher education institutions operate primarily through top-down policy implementation or academic innovation alone. On the other hand, this study offers a dynamic and embedded model, in which entrepreneurship is generated collectively through repeated interactions between policy, institutional actors and economic practices in the real sector. This is evidenced by the fact that over 50% of students are interested in undertaking an internship in the field of entrepreneurship after completing their studies. Currently, there are 69 business units and 50,000 products distributed across several countries by Nurul Iman College, demonstrating the success of the concept of experience- and trust-based entrepreneurship education. Theoretically, this study contributes through the integration of entrepreneurial higher education, institutional engagement and policy feedback in the form of an integrated analytical framework. Nevertheless, this study is limited to a single institutional context, which may restrict the ability to generalise the findings. Future research is expected to test this model across various institutional and sociocultural environments. Overall, this study has significant implications for higher education policy, particularly in building an adaptive and practice-based entrepreneurial ecosystem that can enhance institutional sustainability and student empowerment. This study offers solutions to the issues addressed by SDG 1: No Poverty, SDG 4: Quality Education, SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.</p>