Students’ Intentions of Enrolling in Entrepreneurial Education. United States and the Netherlands
Summary
This master’s thesis aims to investigate the comparison in entrepreneurial programs offered at a university in the United States and one in the Netherlands, to further understand students’ intentions, expectations, and opinions on what is currently being offered. Through a qualitative research approach, this study conducted 18 semi-structured interviews on 2 professors and 16 students from the George Washington University and Utrecht University. The results of this thesis find that students believe that a more immersive learning environment for entrepreneurial material is the ‘best’ way to learn, and one institution takes on a theoretical approach to teaching while the other an experiential style. Students found the material and lessons learned to be useful in their future career paths, whether or not they became entrepreneurs. However, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study, mainly the difference in sample sizes from both institutions, cultural differences affecting learning and teaching, and academic structure differences. Future research should aim to address these concerns by focusing on studies exclusively on one institution, to uncover what is working and what is not within an institution, more comparative studies with countries and/or institutions, as well as study a countries cultural differences when comparing institutions from different countries, as this could potentially play a large role in how content is being taught and presented. Largely, this thesis aims to contribute to entrepreneurial education research, and shed light on the aspects from various university programs benefiting their respective student bodies, and what should be done by institutions to further develop this discipline and its students.