The impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship competencies and intentions: an evaluation of the junior achievement student mini-company program

Both the European Community, its member countries and the United States have stimulated schools to implement entrepreneurship programs into schooling curricula on a large scale, based on the idea that entrepreneurial competencies and mindsets must be developed at school. The leading and acclaimed worldwide program is the Junior Achievement Student Mini-Company Program. Nevertheless, so far, its effects on students' entrepreneurship competencies and attitudes have not been evaluated. This paper analyzes the impact of the program in a Dutch college using an instrumental variables approach in a difference-in-differences framework. The results show that the program does not have the intended effects: students' self-assessed entrepreneurial skills remain unaffected and students' intentions to become an entrepreneur even decrease significantly.