Developing Entrepreneurship Competence in Academia: Emerging Needs in Estonia, Finland, Italy, Poland, and Portugal

Introduction

The development of entrepreneurship competence of students in higher education institutions (HEIs) together with the creation of an entrepreneurial environment for teaching and learning is important for meeting societal challenges in a changing and developing world in turbulent times. Recent research and literature highlights that entrepreneurship education (EE) should educate students on their discipline and on equipping them with the skills and tools needed to navigate the discipline (Neck & Greene, 2011). For instance, the problem is that HEIs are educating students in the discipline (e.g., engineering, IT, business, entrepreneurship) which is why graduates typically have proficient academic and technical skills, but they still lack some other soft skills, which are also known as work readiness and generic skills (Heijke, Meng & Ris, 2003). Indeed, there is an evident ‘skills gap’ in communication, decision-making and problem-solving, cooperation and teamwork (More & Morton, 2017; O’Neil, 2014) and self-reliance, self-discipline and characteristics of general intelligence (Falconer & Pettigrew, 2003; Stewart & Knowles, 2000). Moreover, business owners (particularly small and medium scale businesses) have not passed a special training for acquiring certain entrepreneurial skills (e.g., strategic thinking skills, creative problem-solving) which are defined as enhancing entrepreneurial performance (e.g., Hynes & Richardson, 2007; Mitchelmore & Rowley, 2013).

This creates a need for designing new types of innovative interventions in HEIs, such as goal- and achievement-oriented pedagogic practices which strengthen the self-worth and confidence in the learners’ abilities (Twenge et al., 2010). Educational institutions need to ensure that graduates can act in an enterprising manner in the workplace either as an entrepreneur or as an intrapreneur in paid employment and can have employability skills such as mind-set and knowledge competencies needed in the global market. This additional value can be achieved by using EE as a method (Neck & Greene, 2011) in all study programmes of HEIs (in EE as a discipline and in subject-specific study programmes). The most difficult challenge is embedding the support of the development of entrepreneurship competencies (ECs), such as self-management, thinking skills and social skills, into the curricula. Until today there have been few empirical experiences of these activities among universities and even less evidence in testing the above-mentioned ECs in different study levels (e.g., Bachelor and Master level in university) and in different countries. Therefore, there is an urgent necessity to collect empirical evidence about the need to support the development of ECs in the study levels of Bachelor and Master at university to better understand which sub-competencies educators need to pay more attention to in order to support the learning process of both student groups.

Based on the specific challenges mentioned above, this chapter is focused on the development of entrepreneurship competence in HEIs, mostly in EE courses in Bachelor and Master study levels in five European countries: Estonia, Finland, Italy, Poland and Portugal. The theoretical basis of this study builds on the Estonian Entrepreneurship Competence Model (Venesaar et al., 2018; 2022). Using a self-assessment tool (SECQ) among university students allows the authors to identify the students’ perceptions about the level of their competencies and to investigate the differences between the two study levels. The study involves a total of 1107 university students in the above-mentioned five countries.

The results offer valuable information for HEIs to understand which sub-competencies educators especially need to support concerning the learning process of students in the study level of Bachelor and Master. The study provides important information through the case of five European countries for supporting entrepreneurship and the Europe H2020 strategy, setting out the EU’s intention of achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth (European Commission, 2010).