Fostering Entrepreneurship at the University: A Spanish Empirical Study

Abstract

This study aims to suggest best practices for improving the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education programs in the European area, based on their impact on expected attitudes of undergraduate students towards business startup as a career choice. Particularly, the paper presents some results from a study carried out in two Spanish universities aimed at validating a structure of entrepreneurship education based on a double component of curricular teaching and extracurricular support, and to analyze their effect upon undergraduates’ entrepreneurial selfefficacy and outcome expectations as immediate antecedents of entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors. Sample was comprised of 800 university students, and statistical treatment of data was based on factorial and regression analyses. Findings underline the very limited involvement of Spanish universities in entrepreneurship education as perceived by students, together with the existence of different effects of curricular and extracurricular elements when fostering entrepreneurial careers among future graduates. Implications of these results and limitations of the study are discussed.