Abstract:

Education is not an end in itself. It is a key instrument for bringing about the changes in the knowledge, values, behaviours and lifestyles required to achieve sustainability and stability within and among countries, democracy, human security and peace (UNESCO, 2002). Developing these basic essentials, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) works with a new learning framework where university students must achieve several generic competences during their studies.

Taking into account that university students will rule the world in the future, they have to be innovative entrepreneurs, to have a strong ethical basis, and to master new technologies. Thus, among the generic competences we focus this paper on some competences related to innovation skills trying to build the innovation competence using factor analysis. We also focus on the competences “initiative and entrepreneurial spirit” and “ethical commitment”.

Our aim is twofold. Firstly, we explore in the literature the relationship among innovation, initiative and entrepreneurial spirit and ethical commitment within a framework of higher education competences. Secondly, we explore these relationships empirically for business administration students from a triple perspective: First, attending to business administration students' self-assessment. Second, the relevance they think these competences have for getting better access to the labour market, and finally the role they recognize to the University in the acquisition and improvement of these competences.

Keywords:

Generic Competences, Innovation, Entrepreneurial Spirit, Ethical Commitment.