Abstract:

Private higher education is somewhat new in Croatia and has begun developing over the course of the past few years. Most private HEIs offer undergraduate and graduate business administration programs and claim a higher focus on practical skills and entrepreneurship than their public counterparts. Public HEIs in the field of business management have been present for a quite longer time and do not seem to respond publicly to the claims of private HEIs that are still trying to find and strengthen their place in the higher education system in Croatia. The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive literature review on the factors influencing entrepreneurial intention in students. More specifically this paper aims to explore the role of the institutional setting, i.e. the HEI that the students are attending and to analyze the possible differences between the entrepreneurial intention of students from public and private HEIs. In order to do this, we will collect and analyze data from two matched samples of undergraduate and graduate students attending similar programs that point out the development of entrepreneurial skills as one of their learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Public HEI, private HEI, entrepreneurial intention, institutional factors.