Abstract:

Higher educational institutions across Europe look after new ways of education in response to the needs of the rapidly changing labour market. Learning-by-doing based methods and dual education are ones from the key words for this movement. In compliance with these requests, Budapest Business School - as the first and since the only higher educational institute - in the Hungarian capital introduced and applied in 2012 the so-called ‘Team Academy’ approach, originates from Finland. Main goal of this kind of education is to develop students’ entrepreneurial skills within the walls of a business school, but in the same time with strong connection to actors - and their projects - from real business life.

In the field of Business and Management studies, the general entrepreneurial behaviour is at a very low level among Hungarian students. There the main question to be answered in the paper is, whether (and who) a learning-by-doing based education could help to strengthen skills and competences related to entrepreneurship. Therefore the goal is to compare students’ expectations of skills they can achieve within the process, and competences they finally could acquire from their special combination of studies and real business work.

To have a short overview - and a comparative bases - for the entrepreneurial behaviour of the students at Budapest Business School the article uses the database of the GUESSS – Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students‘ Survey 2014 for Hungary. To analyse the possible difference among expectations, skills and final competences, authors of this article use focus groups interviews with the three different group of students but also make in-depth interviews with business partner to get to know the perspective of the business life as well. On the other hand quantitative techniques are also used in accordance to identify the change in certain competences of students before and after participation in the education.

The article focuses on a novelty as it is taking into consideration not only the expectations of the labour market, but also try to find a balance with requirements of students - interested in entrepreneurship - in a way, which fits to the Hungarian higher educational system. According to the authors, the future and new way of education is based on the balance of the above-mentioned three pillars.

Keywords:

Learning-by-doing based education, entrepreneurial skills and competences.