In a nutshell
Turns out entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily just a university thing. A Danish school reform shows that early exposure to entrepreneurship boosts startup rates and nudges students into entrepreneurial trajectories later on.
For years, educators and policymakers have debated whether entrepreneurship can really be taught. Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize winner, once even suggested that it probably can’t, saying that entrepreneurship is more about luck and personality than education. In this Danish study, they sought to test that idea once and for all.
In 2005, Denmark introduced a nationwide reform requiring its business and technical secondary schools — the three-year programmes students typically attend between ages 16 and 19, before moving on to university or work — to weave entrepreneurship into their curricula. This wasn’t an optional extracurricular or a handful of guest lectures; it was a structural shift, embedding courses and even competitions around innovation, firm economics, and venture creation. Researchers Kristian Nielsen, Stephan Heblich, and Saras Sarasvathy (yes, *that* Sarasvathy of effectuation fame) took this opportunity to examine the long-term effects of this policy experiment, using a rich dataset covering every Danish student graduating between 2005 and 2010.
The results clearly showed that exposure to entrepreneurship content increased the likelihood of starting a business within three years of graduation. The effect was especially pronounced for students in business schools (as opposed to technical ones), and stronger still for those with entrepreneurial parents. The ventures launched weren’t just lemonade stands either — they had to meet Denmark’s official threshold for economic activity to even count. So the study may be missing some small-scale ventures, but the ones that did count were genuine businesses with money coming in and people employed.
Publication Date: June 2025
Authors: Kristian Nielsen, Stephan Heblich, Saras D. Sarasvathy
Institutions: Aalborg University, University of Toronto, University of Virginia
Study Type: Quasi-experimental study using nationwide education reform as natural experiment
Sample Size: All Danish upper secondary school graduates from 2005–2010 (approx. 164,000 students across 247 schools)
Research Focus: To test whether embedding entrepreneurship education in secondary schools influences students’ likelihood of starting businesses and their subsequent education and career choices.
Research Methodology: Difference-in-differences (DID) and coarsened exact matching (CEM) analysis of register data from Statistics Denmark, comparing graduates from reformed schools (business and technical) with general schools.
Main Findings: Students exposed to entrepreneurship content were more likely to start firms within 3 years of graduation. Effects were concentrated in business schools, not technical schools. Students with entrepreneurial parents saw the strongest gains. Startups counted were “real” businesses with employees/sales, not just registrations. Indirect effects: exposure nudged students toward university programmes and jobs historically linked with higher rates of entrepreneurship.
Citation: Nielsen, K., Heblich, S., & Sarasvathy, S. D. (2025). Nationwide entrepreneurship content in secondary schools: Impact on entrepreneurial careers. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. Link
The researchers also looked beyond immediate startups, tracing what these students did in their first steps after school. Here too, the reform left fingerprints. Students exposed to entrepreneurship were more likely to choose university programmes and early jobs that historically correlated with higher future startup activity. In other words, the reform nudged career trajectories in entrepreneurial directions, not just immediate behaviour.
So, what does this mean for higher education? For one, it challenges the often-unspoken assumption that universities are the natural starting line for entrepreneurship education. By the time students arrive at university, their ideas about entrepreneurship may already be shaped, which means that if they’ve had early exposure, they’re better prepared to make the most of university programmes. If they haven’t, they might arrive with unrealistic ideas — or no interest at all.
For policymakers and educators, the implications are twofold. First, entrepreneurship education should be thought of as a pipeline, not a one-off intervention. Secondary school exposure doesn’t replace university-level programmes, but it primes students to take fuller advantage of them. Second, the content itself matters. Business schools saw stronger results in the study because they went beyond motivation talks — they gave students real business know-how, along with competitions and mentors to practise it.
The study doesn’t claim to disprove Arrow’s point entirely, but it does make a strong case for entrepreneurship not just being about destiny or luck. If the results tell us anything, it’s that entrepreneurship can indeed be nurtured and that the sooner we start, the better the odds.
Read more about how Nordic countries embed entrepreneurship in teacher training in our Research Recap on what the Nordics are doing right in entrepreneurship education.
