Start-ups launched by recent STEM university graduates: The impact of university education on entrepreneurial entry

Who becomes an entrepreneur after university? Evidence from Canada

In recent decades there has been significant interest among policy makers in supporting entrepreneurship among university students, with the goal to improve labor market outcomes and contribute to the economy through venture creation. Drawing from the 2018 National Graduate Survey in Canada, our study examines who engages in entrepreneurial activity after graduation, investigating differences among demographic groups and between those who participated in entrepreneurship education on campus and those who did not participate. We find that those graduates who participated in entrepreneurship education are more likely to be self-employed and own their own business three years after graduating than the general population of university graduates. We also find differences according to gender, citizenship, and socio-economic status in entrepreneurial activity. Our results are consistent with previous studies documenting demographic disparities in entrepreneurship and provide more generalizable evidence about the relationship between entrepreneurship education and subsequent entrepreneurship.

In Institutions We Trust? Trust in Government and the Allocation of Entrepreneurial Intentions

Whether entrepreneurship generates economic growth depends on the institutional environment due to its impact on the mix of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship in the economy. The incentive structure embedded in each society affects whether talented people become entrepreneurs and potentially, the extent to which they engage in more productive forms of entrepreneurship. We examine how trust in institutions affects the entrepreneurial intentions of potentially productive entrepreneurs. We utilize the unique event surrounding the impeachment of South Korea’s previous president. The event improved people’s trust in the government because it was ultimately the people’s protests and demands that led to the impeachment of the president for influence peddling and extracting personal rents from businesses. By surveying the same individuals before and after the impeachment ruling, we identify people’s changes in trust in government and various institutions. We find that increased trust in institutions increases one’s intent to start a business within five years. Moreover, we show that the relationship between trust in institutions and entrepreneurial intention is significantly stronger for engineering majors from top universities.

How You Teach Matters! An Exploratory Study on the Relationship between Teaching Models and Learning Outcomes in Entrepreneurship Education

Although entrepreneurship can be taught in different ways, entrepreneurship education impact studies generally fall short with regard to acknowledging the teaching models of the programs they assess. This severely limits our understanding of how entrepreneurship education actually works. To address this gap, this study describes and implements a procedure to identify the teaching models of entrepreneurship education courses and shows how different teaching models are associated with entrepreneurial learning outcomes. Our analysis is based on a sample of 376 Italian university students who responded to the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS) and attended entrepreneurship education courses. We describe and implement a coding procedure that allows us to classify the entrepreneurship courses attended by the respondents into five different teaching models (Supply, Supply–Demand, Demand, Demand–Competence and Competence). We find that courses based on the Supply–Demand, Demand and Demand–Competence Models are associated with better entrepreneurial learning outcomes than those based on the Supply Model. Our findings contribute to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship education program evaluation and design.