The definition of entrepreneurship usually leads us through business and profit-maximizing
techniques and attitudes, usually characterizing individuals and company makers. Recently, the use of the
term social entrepreneurship has also been gaining popularity, to describe the entrepreneurial activities
with the goal of creating social value (Abu-Saifan, 2012; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). Entrepreneurial
activity, in its broad definition, is associated to several factors, both external, such as the economy,
employability, market opportunities, and internal, such as the personality characteristics of individuals
(Zhao, Seibert, & Lumpkin, 2010). In fact, specific traits, such as leadership, optimism, perseverance,
passion, resilience, creativity, empathy and others, are more easily found in entrepreneurial individuals.
Although not usually considered as explicit competences in the curriculum of higher education degrees,
these personality traits can be strengthened, and skills can be learned either directly or by specifying
horizontal competences in higher education programmes. The training intentionality of higher education
institutions is described in the curricular unit forms, which constitute the study plan of current educational
programmes. These are rigorously focused on vertical competences, associated to the scientific area of the
programme, but they also include horizontal skills, that contribute to empower the student with a broader
set of knowledge and abilities. The teaching and learning methodologies, the content of the curricular
units and the learning outcomes all describe the training process, which can be analysed to get an overall
idea of the intentionality of entrepreneurship training in current educational degrees.
