The Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on Entrepreneurs' Skills

Introduction And Literature Review

The development of any economy in the world is the result of human development. It is achieved by using the available resources and creating new ways of production, leading to the issue of entrepreneurship in creating new businesses and new job opportunities. A growing existence of entrepreneurs can have a significant impact on different aspects of the economy as it can reduce the unemployment, increase the level of creativity and productivity (Memba et al., 2012; Aremu and Adeyemi, 2011).

In the recent years, it has become clear that entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth (Marcotte, 2012). For this reason, the governments around the world created ways to encourage entrepreneurship, including entrepreneurs financing, and suitable governance and legal protections for contracts (Armour and Cumming, 2006). One of the instruments to encourage and support entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship education (Fayolle et al., 2006). In US, the number of entrepreneurship programs and investment in entrepreneurship programs has increased significantly (Goldin and Katz, 2008). In addition, the European Commission supports this kind of education since they believe that the primary purpose of entrepreneurship education is to “develop entrepreneurial capacities and mindsets” (European Commission, 2008: 11).

The interest in entrepreneurship education started around the 1980’s (Barucic and Umihanic 2016). Gibb (2009) defines entrepreneurship education as a process where an individual develops skills, behaviors and attributes, to create, bear and enjoy the changes and innovation in a larger level of uncertainty and complexity. Previous studies measured and analyzed the impact of entrepreneurship education, out of 41 studies 39 indicated a positive or mixed result (Lorz et al., 2011) while only two recent studies find a negative impact of entrepreneurship education (Oosterbeek et al., 2010; von Graevenitz et al., 2010). Although previous studies focused on the importance of entrepreneurship education on several aspects, but the impact of entrepreneurship education on building substantial skills in entrepreneurs has not been sufficiently examined. Therefore, this study aims to measure the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurs’ skills.

The model is designed based on the literature review. In general, this study proposes the conceptual framework as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Conceptual Framework

The study hypotheses are designed based on the literature review.

• Hypothesis one:

• H1₀: The entrepreneurship education has no impact on technical skills.

• H1a: The entrepreneurship education has impact on technical skills.

• Hypothesis two:

• H2₀: The entrepreneurship education has no impact on business management skills.

• H2a: The entrepreneurship education has impact on business management skills.

• Hypothesis three:

• H3₀: The entrepreneurship education has no impact on personal entrepreneurial skills.

• H3_a: The entrepreneurship education has impact on personal entrepreneurial skills.