Entrepreneurship education is a type of education that aims to provide students with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in various settings. It is offered at all levels of schooling, from primary and secondary schools to graduate university programs. The main objectives of entrepreneurship education are to develop the skills and attributes that enable the realization of opportunities, with a focus on achieving "profit" in some form, which can include increased services, decreased costs, or increased responsiveness to customers, citizens, or clients.
Entrepreneurship education can be oriented towards different ways of realizing opportunities, with the most popular one being regular entrepreneurship, which involves opening a new organization or starting a new business. However, entrepreneurship education is not limited to business owners and can be beneficial for individuals in various careers, as it teaches unique skills and strategies that can lead to success in different fields.
There is a distinction between entrepreneurship education and enterprise education. While entrepreneurship education emphasizes setting up, starting, and running a business, enterprise education focuses on developing the attitudes, competencies, and behaviors for functioning entrepreneurially within business and non-business contexts. Both types of education play a crucial role in the entrepreneurship development process, with teachers and entrepreneurship educators being key figures in facilitating students growth.
Entrepreneurial education is about developing students' ability to create social, cultural, or economic value, enabling them to think critically and solve problems in innovative ways. This type of education is increasingly gaining a permanent position in the curriculum, as it prepares students for the future and equips them with the skills needed in a continually changing world.