Students' Entrepreneurial Competencies and Orientation: Current Status and Perspectives

Currently one can witness a revolutionary change in teaching/learning strategies and an evolution which should reconsider the relation between educational institutions, teaching staff, and students, on the one hand, and economic agents, public or private companies, firms, and NGOs, on the other.Despite the large amount of research focusing on the entrepreneurial phenomenon, there has been limited focus on the effect of education upon enterprise performance in terms of venture creation and development and on ascertaining the main factors which determine young people to undertake entrepreneurial careers.Prompted by these observations, the present study is the result of research carried out within three universities in the Northeast Development Region of Romania between October and December 2009.The main objective was to analyse students' orientation to entrepreneurship and to evaluate their interest in the status of the entrepreneur.The research goal was to assess the effectiveness of including special training programmes for young entrepreneurs in the educational offer and of providing active support for young students, graduates and researchers to set up their own firms.