The Differential Impact of Entrepreneurship Education on the Entrepreneurial Intentions of Segments of Students

Inconclusive prior research on the effects of entrepreneurship education may be an aggregation artefact because student subjects were assumed to be homogenous. Accordingly, we examine the impact of entrepreneurship education on student intention, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude towards entrepreneurship among theoretically relevant sub-groups of Norwegian business students. We find that at aggregate level, self-efficacy increases while attitude towards entrepreneurship and intentions remain unchanged. However, on closer examination we find that entrepreneurial self-efficacy and attitude towards entrepreneurship increase for some subgroups of students, decrease for other subgroups of students, and have opposite, cancelling, changes for still others. Such unmasking of the true effects of entrepreneurship education helps ensure that pedagogy, funding, and public policy decisions are made appropriately.