Entrepreneurship Education in Spain

Abstract

The emergence of new business models as a result of the growth of the knowledge-based economy have brought to the rise of the entrepreneurship atmosphere among the younger generation, particularly the university graduates. For many years ago, it was strongly believed that entrepreneurs need no formal education. A successful entrepreneur is someone who works hard and has accumulated substantial experiences in relevant activity. The traditional entrepreneur usually starts from small business and small capital, involves in traditional business with low value-added and it takes him to struggle for many years to build up his career. Today, as evidenced by successful entrepreneurs at United States, especially from those in the Silicon Valley involving in high tech, high growth and high value-added activities, a new bleed of entrepreneurs with strong academic background, particularly those who know how to take advantage of Internet and other information communication technologies (ICTs) is required. Therefore, the growing concern is how should the education institutions, particularly the tertiary education institutions, impart essential entrepreneurial knowledge in the syllabus to equip future entrepreneurs with the necessary skills – the so called “entrepreneurship education”. This paper looks at the entrepreneurship education in Malaysia as the Malaysian government has taken great effort to transform the economy into the knowledge-based economy. In this regard, “entrepreneur” has been identified as one of the key elements to the development of the knowledge economy. Thus, this paper attempts to study the development of entrepreneurship education in Malaysia and to investigate the effectiveness of the entrepreneur education in Malaysia. To achieve the objectives of the study, primary data are collected. In order to examine the development of entrepreneurship education in Malaysia, interviews with students are conducted to collect students’ feedback on the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship teaching, to reveal their knowledge about entrepreneurship, their willingness to start up their own business, and factors influencing their decision to be entrepreneurs.