Page 128 - guidance-supporting-europe-s-aspiring-entrepreneurs-policy-and-practice-to-harness-future-potential

Guidance supporting Europe’s aspiring entrepreneurs
Policy and practice to harness future potential

assistance to students. According to the online survey of European guidance
practitioners and policy-makers, the proportion of HE students who benefit from
formal guidance in entrepreneurship is relatively low in Europe. Most
respondents thought that less than a quarter of students benefit from guidance
for entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship based guidance is more commonly available and present
in more diverse forms in Western rather than Eastern European countries.
Formal guidance for entrepreneurship in East and South East European
countries is still weak and, until recently, provisions in new Member States were
relatively rare. However, significant progress has been made in the last two years
in many Eastern European HEIs in (e.g. Latvia and Lithuania). Financial
shortcomings remain a real problem for HEIs in these countries (e.g. Estonia)
and the financial crisis has accentuated this problem. Nonetheless, non-formal
guidance activities are available in most European countries, although the
number of activities and quality of support varies significantly between countries
and within them. European funding, especially ESF, has played an important part
in enabling many European countries to invest more in enterprise support (e.g.
Greece).
Integrating the enterprise support unit with the career service offer of HEIs is
one successful way of mainstreaming entrepreneurship as a means of living,
working and learning. This was showed by the example from Newcastle
University. The arrangements ensure that the staff of HEI careers services
possess expertise in entrepreneurship and that all prospective and current
students are informed about available enterprise support and related training.
Successful non-formal (and non-conventional) guidance channels include
peer-to-peer methods, such as student entrepreneur clubs, student enterprise
ambassadors and opportunities offered by new media (e.g. social networking
sites and online student support services). These methods have made a real and
immediate impact on entrepreneurial education in HEIs which have used them
(see examples from the University of Navarra, Spain and the Norwegian
Entrepreneurship Programme).

4.5.3. Opportunities offered by HEIs for entrepreneurial career exploration
Group assignments, real-life case studies and assignments for companies are
particularly relevant to today’s HE arena. Businesses are the source of the real-
life examples and experiences that are essential for student learning. They allow
students to become active participants in the entrepreneurial career process;
they can see how their personality matches a career as an entrepreneur as the

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