As a result of the political guidance divulged by the European Union (EU), since the beginning of this century, higher education in Europe has included a new challenge: empowering the so-called “entrepreneur spirit”. Encouragement of qualified youth entrepreneurship is widespread throughout the continent and has acquired special prominence in the Southern countries, where the European crisis has reverberated in more dramatic ways. The tendency among several educational institutions to adapt their procedures to the EU guidelines materialized in the inclusion of new disciplines in the curricula, in the creation of student associations linked to entrepreneurship and in the establishment of administrative and academic structures which foster the spin-off concept and knowledge transfer. Despite these efforts, there is still no tradition in assessing and monitoring the results of such initiatives, and, therefore, it is not possible to adequately know and anticipate their economic outcome and impact, namely on employment. This article indicates three major analytical lines in the observation of this new vector that is changing higher education. We intend to de-naturalize the concept of entrepreneurship by avoiding the trap of its reification; next, we shall conduct a brief review about how the notion of entrepreneurship developed in the academic field; finally, we aim to document the relevance that the entrepreneurial orientation has gained in the design of EU policies, highlighting how remarkable they have become in the educational system, especially for the highest educational degrees.
Higher education; Entrepreneurship; Public policy; Youth; Transition to work