Assessing the impact of the “Entrepreneurs” education programme on participants‘ entrepreneurial intentions

Abstract

The study of students’ entrepreneurial intentions and the influencing factors is especially relevant for the development of education programmes, as is the monitoring of those programmes to assess whether they are effective and what their impact has been. Building upon insights from Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, a control-group longitudinal design was used to investigate the impact of participation in the “Entrepreneurs” programme, offered by the University of Castilla-La Mancha, in Spain, with the sponsorship of regional institutions. The methodology involved the completion of a questionnaire at the end of the course and a follow-up questionnaire six months later to establish if the effect of the course had been maintained or not after this period. The study found that participants in the programme had higher levels of self-efficacy at the end of it, and that these levels had been maintained over time. They also displayed greater entrepreneurial intention after a period of time than non-participants. However, after six months, the participants perceived greater difficulties in the environment, thus reducing the feasibility of entrepreneurship as a career option. Despite this, entrepreneurial intention was higher than for the control group and increased over time with regard to creativity. The conclusions and implications of these results are discussed in the final section of this paper.