Interested in Being a Business Owner? Improving Higher Education in Entrepreneurship

The objective of this paper is to identify ways of improving higher education in entrepreneurship, focusing on Brazilian students who want to be self-employed or have their own business. In this article, they are named intentional founders. The study is a survey complemented by a short literature review. The online questionnaire was answered by 12, 604 Brazilian students from 37 public and private higher-education institutions. According to their answers, they present a higher demand for entrepreneurship education and a higher entrepreneurial intention than students from other countries. Three hypotheses were tested. Results show that more or less entrepreneurship education (EE) has no effect on students' entrepreneurial intention and self-efficacy (self-perception of being well-prepared to do successful entrepreneurial activities). On the other hand, entrepreneurial intention has a significant and positive association with demand for EE. Taking advantage of students' high demand seems attractive to facilitate the necessary improvement of EE in Brazil. The discussions and conclusions at the end of the paper offer recommendations not only for the improvement of higher education, but also for conducting further research.