The influence of entrepreneurship indicators on career outcomes and career adaptability of academic continuing education students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been embraced as a term that encompasses the behaviors, attitudes, and expertise needed for succeeding in the present labor market. In this sense, entrepreneurship has acquired importance and value all around Europe, and frameworks like the EntreComp support its introduction to the education system. This thesis focuses on describing the influence of entrepreneurship personal indicators on the career outcomes and career adaptability of students in the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria. Furthermore, the study focuses on continuing education students, a group that is not usually targeted and that can bring insights into lifelong learning education. The present study uses five different scales to analyze students' personal value of entrepreneurship, perceived entrepreneurship competences, entrepreneurship intention, perceived employability, and career adaptability. The study is a cross-sectional survey, and spearman correlation and ordinal logistic regression are used as the analysis methods. The results show that only one of the entrepreneurship indicators (entrepreneurship personal value and entrepreneurship competences) has a significant positive influence on the career variables. Entrepreneurship competences has a higher influence on the perception of the students doing well and adapting to the changing labor market, but it does not encourage them to become entrepreneurs. In contrast, the personal value of entrepreneurship relates strongly to the entrepreneurial intention, but not to the perceived employability, and career adaptability of the students. Moreover, the student’s perception on their entrepreneurship competences showed that they have a lower confidence in their specific knowledge, like digital know-how, legal know-how and financial know-how. These areas can bring important benefits to the students and their introduction in all fields of study should be considered. The results provide valuable information for curricula planning and for the creation of new policies that consider a wider diversity of students, in this case, academic continuing education students.