Samenvatting

The economic situation of Europe and growth of employment largely depends on small sized and medium sized enterprises that provides around 4 million jobs every year. Young people face increasing difficulties in finding jobs and therefore there is a pressing need to promote entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial education enables young people to become valuable contributors to Europe’s economy. The European Studies programme taught at The Hague University of Applied Science focuses on the public and private sectors, thus graduates of the programme can consider as one of the option for future to start a business. The central question of the study is ‘How does the European Studies’ curriculum meet the demands of students that want to start their own business?’.
In order to answer this question two sub-questions were generated. The first one is focused on exploring the “ideal” curriculum. The second sub-question examines what the European studies curriculum offers to students, who want to start a business.
The ideal start-up curriculum based on theory should include business plans with chapters such as opportunity analysis and research, marketing strategy and planning, management and operation, financial analysis and projections and funding request and strategy. In conclusion, the ideal curriculum should include lean start-up methodology which is a method for developing businesses and products, legal dimension of business such as legal business structure, intellectual property and business insurance. The last aspect of perfect business is business pitching. The ideal curriculum based on practices suggest the familiarisation of students with importance of knowledge of industry and networking. Furthermore it includes business plans and highlights the necessity of conducting market research, knowledge of finance, marketing, lean start-up methodology, practical issues such as people planet profit approach and taxation. Communication courses are also suggested by interviewed start-up owners, who emphasises business pitching, intercultural communication, working in groups and the organisation of field trips.
In next chapter whole European studies curriculum is explored and the main subjects that are useful for a students are examined at depth.
The analysis section of documents focuses on similarities, differences and aspect that stood out. The first part of analyses compares the traditional business plan with the lean start-up methodology. The second part, based on practice, includes the individual interviews and comparisons within them and the third part is analysing theory and practice. A suggested recommendation to the European studies curriculum is deepen the knowledge regarding financial intelligence and included ‘guest lectures’ where students can interact with an experienced entrepreneur.