Track: Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the curriculum guidelines for higher education offered by Brazilian public and private institutions have emphasized the importance of developing competencies and skills that enable the graduate to perform his or her professional activities more efficiently and effectively and with a high level of social responsibility. Institutions, in this context, have followed different paths in offering courses that meet these guidelines, and, in several of these institutions, entrepreneurial education has gained particular emphasis. Entrepreneurial education also involves the development of skills considered fundamental for the education of professionals for the 21st century. This paper aims to analyze the contribution of a student organization focused on entrepreneurship to the efforts associated with entrepreneurial education in the context of a private Higher Education Institution. The method adopted to achieve the proposed objective is based on qualitative and quantitative aspects, by associating the realization of a case study with the application of a questionnaire to the students impacted by the initiatives of the student organization. Among the main results are the evidence that the student organization had, during its first year of existence, a substantial impact on the entrepreneurial education of the participating students, increasing the desire to create their startup as well as contributing to the dissemination of practical knowledge about  entrepreneurial activity, rivaling the excessively theoretical teaching that students receive in the classroom.