Abstract:

The Romanian entrepreneurial landscape has changed dramatically after the country’s accession to the European Union in 2007. Within the broader European context, various programmes and projects aiming at fostering and supporting entrepreneurial initiatives especially among young people emerged in Romania. At the same time, it can be noted from the literature that students, representatives of the Generation Z, are more entrepreneurial than previous generations. Further, there is a high pressure on universities to stimulate entrepreneurship, to produce more job creators instead of job seekers. This requires a transformation of the curricula of the educational programmes in line with the new mindset of “how to do” instead of “what to learn”.

In the first section of the study, we critically review and assess the current situation of the entrepreneurial education in the regional universities from Romania. In the second section, we focus on the largest university of economics in Romania, namely the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES), and we present the results of a qualitative investigation on student entrepreneurial behaviour. In this way, we tried to capture the efforts of BUES to become more entrepreneurial in correspondence with the entrepreneurial needs of one of its main stakeholders, the students. Students’ entrepreneurial behaviour was investigated in terms of: entrepreneurial intention, type of activity, reasons and barriers for entrepreneurship, family entrepreneurial record, entrepreneurial education and training. The final section discusses the implications of the study for different stakeholders with attributions in developing educational programmes and curricula, policies, regulations and other operational measures aimed at stimulating entrepreneurship.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial education, higher education, student entrepreneurship.