Do Practice Stages Encourage Students in Economics to Practice Entrepreneurship? Practeam Project

Abstract

The analysis of the influence of practice and internship stages to strengthen entrepreneurial skills of students in Economics and encouraging them to practice entrepreneurship is an interesting additional result of PRACTeam project that proposes a model of transition from school to active life for students in Economics based on inter-regional labour market partnership between universities and business environment. In our opinion, the potential of Practice – as curricular activity, but also as work and learning experience - to enhance student entrepreneurship learning is under-evaluated and under-exploited. The research activity performed in order to find if practice stages encourage students in Economics to practice entrepreneurship took place in two directions: quantitative – consisting in the research based on the survey of the most significant aspects concerning the influence of practice stages to strengthen entrepreneurial skills of students in Economics and encouraging them to practice entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial profile of the potentially enterprising students - member of the PRACTeam project's target groups, and qualitative – consisting in the research based on an open structured interview of some aspects concerning the entrepreneurial profile applied to some successful students who were awarded in the project, who were employed as result of internship stages and who became entrepreneurs. Starting from the results of the quantitative and qualitative research performed in the PRACTeam project, the paper concludes with arguments and recommendations for emerging challenges in university curricula and pedagogical approaches in order to support both youth employment and youth entrepreneurship and to encourage potential entrepreneurship of students in Economics in Romania.