The effect of education on entrepreneurship: Examining the influence of new venture creation programs on entrepreneurial intention and behaviour

Abstract: Although venture creation programs (VCPs) are becoming increasingly popular within entrepreneurship education, still little is known about how effective these programs actually are and if they foster more and better entrepreneurs compared to entrepreneurship master that do not oblige VCPs in their curriculum. Therefore, this thesis aims to analyse the differences in entrepreneurial intention and behaviour between entrepreneurship masters that teach according to the extreme form of experience-based pedagogy with a mandatory VCP and entrepreneurship masters that do not apply the VCP in their curriculum. To do so, a survey approach was applied in which 63 alumni from four Swedish entrepreneurship masters participated. Half of the alumni followed a mandatory VCP in their entrepreneurship masters, whereas the other half did not follow a VCP in their entrepreneurship master. By comparing both groups, we found no significant differences between intrapreneurship levels, yet, entrepreneurship students who followed a VCP, exhibited significant higher levels of intention, nascent entrepreneurship activities, and firm creation (rates). As such, this study contributes to the limited knowledge on VCPs and hence provides practical contributions to entrepreneurship education stakeholders to use VCPs as a learning vessel.