Perspectives on entrepreneurship education. A review of empirical results, policy frameworks and methodological suggestions

Entrepreneurship education (EE) programmes are booming in Europe at both the university and the vocational-school level. In the post covid-19 pandemic, EE has been promoted even further as a key policy tool to improve the level of competitiveness and innovation of European regions, through the creation of new ventures. Although national and regional governments have invested considerable resources in EE over the last two decades, extant research has reported mixed results about the impact EE exerts on students’ entrepreneurial intention (EI), skills, personal traits and career paths. The literature on EE is also broad and fragmented. Furthermore, there is still not a common framework regarding the design of EE programmes and the tools to assess their effectiveness. This paper offers three contributions to the study of EE. First, it reviews a selection of most cited and relevant articles about the impact of EE on students’ EI, to identify the main theoretical aspects and empirical findings. Second, this review synthesises both the advantages and the disadvantages of the most used empirical strategies and tools in this field of research; then, drawing on the studies reviewed, some methodological suggestions for evaluating EE programmes are proposed. Third, after describing the European and the Italian policyframeworks for EE, this paper presents a selection of recommendations which may inform the design and the implementation of both EE programmes and public policies.