The Effects of Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education ranks highly on policy agendas in Europe and the US, butlittle research is available to assess its impacts. In this context it is of primary importanceto understand whether entrepreneurship education raises intentions to be entrepreneurialgenerally or whether it helps students determine how well suited they are for entrepreneurship.We develop a theoretical model of Bayesian learning in which entrepreneurshipeducation generates signals which help students to evaluate their own aptitude for entrepreneurialtasks. We derive predictions from the model and test them using data froma compulsory entrepreneurship course at a German university. Using survey responsesfrom 189 students ex ante and ex post, we find that entrepreneurial propensity declinedsomewhat in spite of generally good evaluations of the class. Our tests of Bayesian updatingprovide support for the notion that students receive valuable signals and learn abouttheir own type in the entrepreneurship course....