Entrepreneurship Education and its Outcomes : A study investigating students' attitudes and motivations after completing an entrepreneurial program

Abstract: At the core of entrepreneurship is the debate surrounding whether an entrepreneur is born or can be created. The literature to date argues for and against both sides but acknowledges that entrepreneurial education plays a key role in assisting the development of entrepreneurs. While many aspects of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial education are discussed in the literature, there is little discussion about the relationship the two have on the attitudes and motivations of the students taking entrepreneurial programs.The importance of entrepreneurship is shown by its economic importance and the fact that governments are actively trying to increase the level of entrepreneurship within their countries.By examining the existing literature we identify that there are four key characteristics of an entrepreneur. These are: motivation, opportunity identification, risk and uncertainty and the ability to network. From there we also analyse the role of education and in particular the relationship between entrepreneurial education and entrepreneurship. We identify how entrepreneurial education can be used to develop entrepreneurship both individually and within a region.This allows us to assess the effects on the attitudes of students undergoing entrepreneurial education by looking at their attitudes towards the characteristics of an entrepreneur, before and after the entrepreneurial program is complete.The research takes a qualitative approach with eight students of an entrepreneurial program at the Umeå University being interviewed and their responses being analysed. The program has been running from 2003, and respondents were chosen between 2003 and 2010. Semi-structured interviews were conducted based on the entrepreneurial characteristics outlined above however there was also scope to enable the respondent to speak freely about the entrepreneurial education they received to assess if other factors affected their attitudes and motivations. After conducting interviews and analysing the empirical data we find that entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on students‟ attitude and motivation, especially on areas such as opportunity identification and networking. The findings also show that there are aspects that the education fails to provide, which in effect have a negative impact on students attitude and motivation.