Entrepreneurship education ranks high on policy agendas in Europe and the US, but little research is available to assess its impact. To help close this gap we investigate whether entrepreneurship education affects intentions to be entrepreneurial uniformly or whether it leads to greater sorting of students. The latter can reduce the average intention to be entrepreneurial and yet be socially beneficial. This paper provides a model of learning in which entrepreneurship education generates signals to students. Drawing on the signals, students evaluate their aptitude for entrepreneurial tasks. The model is tested using data from a compulsory entrepreneurship course. Using ex-ante and ex-post-survey responses from students, we find that intentions to found decline somewhat although the course has significant positive effects on students’ self-assessed entrepreneurial skills. The empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that students receive informative signals and learn about their entrepreneurial aptitude. We outline implications for educators and public policy.

The purpose of this paper is to develop the understanding of the challenges and considerations of how new and innovative entrepreneurship education programmes may be inculcated into UK higher education institutions (HEIs).

E3, standing for Embedding Enterprise Education, started in August 2006 as a HEIF3 funded initiative to promote the learning and teaching of enterprise or entrepreneurship across all subject areas of the University of Birmingham. This paper aims to explore how the initiative was marketed to academic Schools at a time when the RAE was taking high priority, discuss the levels of engagement across campus, and provide examples of E3 funded projects.