Abstract:

Education and sustainability are two primary concepts, that are needed to drive the societal development for future generations. When the concept of education for sustainable development (ESD) was coined, and later analyzed and introduced into various educational settings, the outcomes for the future of humanity became tangible. ESD is a global matter, affecting all nations and peoples, by creating the favorable context for sustainable long-term development, for a secure and thriving future. The main element in this plan is education. Children would learn, from the earliest stages of their development, the basic tenets of sustainability, and would follow through until the university level. At this level, university education is the final and most important element in developing an entrepreneurial mindset, that would implement sustainability principles in the actions of entrepreneurs, as they develop their businesses. The university curriculum should, therefore, present the practical issues regarding sustainability, together with how they can be implemented successfully in entrepreneurial ventures. Through this research, we propose to analyze the role of education sustainability in the University curriculum on sustainable entrepreneurial intentions among the master's students by using a partial least squares (PLS) - structural equation modeling (SEM). The data was collected using a questionnaire addressed to master's students at the Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Romania and were analyzed using the statistical software SmartPLS 3.3.9. In this research, we also aim to analyze the impact of the attitude towards sustainability related entrepreneurship on the intention to become an entrepreneur that supports sustainability. It further aims to analyze the mediating role of the attitude on the relationship between education sustainability in the University curriculum and the sustainability entrepreneurial intentions of master's students. The results of the study confirm the hypotheses presented in the article, emphasizing that sustainability entrepreneurial intentions are the direct and intrinsic result of education sustainability in the University curriculum, while the attitude towards sustainability has a reduced mediating effect between the independent variable and the dependent variable, represented by the intention to start entrepreneurship for sustainability among the master's students of the Faculty of Economic Sciences. The research is aimed at helping researchers, students, educational institutions, and policy makers, to better integrate the positive aspects of ESD into the curriculum and the teaching methods used at the university level, with the specific purpose of enabling the integration of sustainability in the development of future entrepreneurs. In this way, sustainable entrepreneurship would become the norm and the driving force of societal development.

Keywords:

Sustainability, education, entrepreneurship, PLS-SEM.