Drivers of entrepreneurship and the role of education in Romania.

The paper aims to contribute to the better knowledge and understanding on entrepreneurship education and its role in supporting the development of entrepreneurial intentions in Romania. Analyzing the role of entrepreneurship education on influencing decision to of starting up a business is on the rise worldwide, a lot of importance being put on the importance of entrepreneurship education in supporting diversification of careers and transitions from unemployment or inactivity to self-employment. The empirical evidences for Romania, even if they are already addressed by several papers mainly focused on entrepreneurship education in universities still provide a lot of food for quantitative and qualitative analyses. The paper uses the data provided by Flask Eurobarometer 354 to depict the profile of Romanians that were involved in entrepreneurship education, but also to define an index on perceived effects of education in order to link the participation to entrepreneurial programs to the decision of individuals to start-up their own business. The findings on the profile of those ever engaged in entrepreneurship education in Romania points out to the structural inequalities embedded in the Romanian educational system, but also emphasize the rapid extension of the curriculum in this direction. Education is perceived as very important in building up attitudes and knowledge that support entrepreneurial intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]