WHAT KIND OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AND FOR WHOM? SOME EVIDENCE FROM A SYSTEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN HIGHER EDUCATION CONTEXT

During the last twenty years uneven entrepreneurship education initiatives increased not only in Italian universities aimed at training qualified professionals capable of promoting entrepreneurship projects, processes and products. Albeit in the presence of a common law, each university, sometimes in collaboration with private organizations, has launched different typologies of incubators and accelerators aimed at providing a variety of entrepreneurship education initiatives for unlike types of spin-offs and start-ups. For the Italian case, the chaotic heterogeneity both of legal forms of receiving entities (different types of spin-offs and start-ups) and of the training offer provided in the Italian university context (e.g. incubator, accelerator, etc.) together with the frequent discrepancies between the various definitions and practices of "entrepreneurship education" can constitute elements that are at least worthy of reflection, while critical, on what type of "entrepreneurship education" and whom is being promoted. Among the various questions: Are there a common definition of "entrepreneurship education"? How many types of spin-offs and start-ups and how many forms of incubators and accelerators are present in the Italian higher education context? How much and to what extent is the training offer diversified? These and other relevant questions prompted us to explore this topic with regard to the higher education Italian context.