Effects of education for entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intention in university students

Preliminary studies do not find a consensus on whether educational programs to transfer knowledge and develop entrepreneurial skills strengthen the relationship between intention and entrepreneurial behavior at the university level. Therefore, this research explores the effects of entrepreneurship education on attitudes, subjective norms, perceived control and the intention to be entrepreneurs of students in the last years of their university careers. This study uses quantitative methodology to evaluate the proposed model; A survey was conducted on students from different public and private universities located in Costa Rica, and data collection was carried out through a questionnaire with 40 questions, 306 students answered the survey. Results were analyzed with structural equation modeling using the Partial Least Square Model (PLS-SEM). We found that education does not work as a stimulant for the intention to be an entrepreneur, but it does influence perceived control. In addition, we found that the factor that most influences the intention to be an entrepreneur is the attitude towards entrepreneurship that students have. And finally, we ratify that subjective norms influence both the attitude towards entrepreneurship and the perceived control. Since most of the studies on entrepreneurship topics focus their attention on the entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial behavior of university students, the study on how entrepreneurial education affects or does not affect entrepreneurial intention is of the utmost importance, because in recent years, universities have integrated business and entrepreneurship topics into their curricula, understanding that entrepreneurship stimulates economies.