Entrepreneurial Learning Outcomes and Occupational Status of Business Graduates in the Baltics

Abstract

In this paper, we present results of the quantitative analysis, which examines a relationship between learning outcomes of entrepreneurship education (EE) and occupational status choices of Bachelor business graduates in two post-transition Baltic countries, Estonia and Latvia. The underlying conceptual framework relies on the adapted Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives, human capital theory and model of entrepreneurial careers. From this taxonomy we examine knowledge, skills and attitudes as the focal learning outcomes of EE. We compare these outcomes to three choices of employment status: employment entry, nascent intrapreneurship and private early-stage entrepreneurial activity. The study also gives due consideration to the types of EE intervention, namely, traditional and experiential. We drew the sample of 454 respondents from a population of imminent and recent graduates from Bachelor degree business programs delivered at Estonian and Latvian higher education institutions. We used cross-sectional design with a matched comparison group. The findings of the study challenge common assumptions by suggesting that knowledge and skills obtained during EE had no direct effect on occupational status, and none of the learning outcomes was related to employment entry. Furthermore, graduates who took part in predominantly traditional and predominantly experiential EE had similar chances to become entrepreneurs. Our discussion of possible reasons behind the unexpected results should be of special interest to entrepreneurship educators and researchers for designing EE courses and further evaluation studies.