Abstract:

In recent years, it has been an increasing interest from public policy in promoting entrepreneurship education over the student’s life time. Moreover, it is recognized a lack of entrepreneurship knowledge and skills (OCDE/European Union 2017). Specially, the dreadful situation of Europe’s young where there exists more than 5 million unemployed young people (under 25) justifies the need to pay special attention to promoting youth entrepreneurship skills in order to develop talent and to stimulate young self- employment.

The motivation for this research is to review main educational programs to promote entrepreneurship competencies and to present the experience at Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) Alcoy Campus through the projects IdeaT-Kids, Business Factory. IdeaT-Kids is a collaborative project in which IDEAS UPV, Alcoy Campus, local and regional institutions and firms are involved in order to promote creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship competencies at primary school. More than 1000 fifth- and sixth-year students from primary school have participated in this project in which professors and students from the Business Administration Degree offers to young entrepreneurs mentoring and support. The project is structured in four stages. After voluntary participation of the schools, the UPV Campus of Alcoy offers specific "training for entrepreneurship" to the teachers responsible of the students’ teams. During two months, the children should develop an innovative and sustainable business project. Finally, the projects are presented in UPV and a panel with members from the business community, the school and the university select the best projects. Moreover, other activities such as workshops and students’ competitions are organized to promote creativity and innovation by the group of ``Generación Espontanea´´ Business Factory, in which 20 students of the Business Administration Degree at Campus de Alcoy are involved. Furthermore, entrepreneurship skills are included as a transversal competence CT-4 Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Universitat Politècnica de València, specifically at the Business Administration Degree in Alcoy Campus two different academic projects are implemented from the first to the third year.

The aim of this research is twofold. First by presenting and discussing significant aspects of youth entrepreneurship educational programs in the European Union and in Spain. Second by describing the set of activities developed at the UPV Campus de Alcoy to promote youth entrepreneurship skills.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurship skills, Creativity, Educational programs, Youth-employment, UE.