PTWho takes entrepreneurship off the page at university?
Almost every Business Administration program promises students an "entrepreneurial profile". The thesis interviewed 16 entrepreneurship teachers in Greater São Paulo and read 11 program plans: the curriculum helps, but it is the teacher who turns paper into experience, with more or less institutional support. Explained in 12 screens.
What is written in the curriculum (blue sheets) passes through the teacher's hands (red block) and only then reaches the students, already transformed. Drag to rotate.
What is on paper does not always reach the classroom the same way
Every Brazilian degree program has a Pedagogical Course Project (PPC): the document that says what students should learn and how. The literature had already warned that the written curriculum and the lived one tend to differ. The thesis wanted to understand how one becomes the other. Flip the cards.
Sections 4.3.2, 4.4.1, 4.4.4 and 4.6.3. The quotes come from interviewed teachers, identified only by code (E1 to E16), as in the thesis, and are translated by us. What is "on paper" summarizes passages from the PPCs analyzed (D1 to D11), also unnamed.
Entrepreneurship is not just starting a company: it is 15 competencies
The thesis starts from EntreComp, a framework created by the European Union in 2016. It treats entrepreneurship as the ability to create value, at work, in life and as a citizen, in three steps: imagine, prepare and act. Tap a competency.
Charts 22 and 44. The competencies are from Bacigalupo and colleagues (2016); the color shows how the author translated them into the analysis categories ("direct", "conceptual" correspondence or "pedagogical translation"). The steps are our sketch: height measures nothing.
Sixteen teachers told how they teach; eleven program plans showed what they promise
Between July and September 2025, the author interviewed one entrepreneurship teacher at each of 16 institutions in Greater São Paulo, public and private, from business schools to engineering schools. He also read the Business Administration PPCs of the 11 that had the document available. See who the teachers are.
Charts 36, 37 and 40. Counts by degree, time and role are ours, as is grouping roles into three types. The thesis does not say which teacher is from which institution, nor which PPC belongs to which school. Five institutions did not have the PPC public nor sent it.
Do what the author did: read a quote and say which theme it belongs to
Interviews and PPCs were read passage by passage in the NVivo software: each passage got a code, codes became subthemes and subthemes became five main themes. Choose the theme of each quote.
Charts 35, 41 and 45 and section 4.4.1. The first four quotes and their codes are the examples in Chart 35; the fifth comes from section 4.4.1, which does not give the initial code. The total of 1,993 coded passages is our sum from Chart 45; the thesis does not say whether a passage could fall into more than one subtheme. The first theme came from EntreComp; the others emerged in the analysis.
Critical thinking and initiative lead; people learn by doing
Entrepreneurship shows up less as motivational talk and more as concrete competencies built through action. Switch between what and how students learn and tap a bar.
The topics that come up most combine competency and practice
Each dot is one of the 35 subthemes. To the right, found in more sources (interviews and PPCs, up to 27); upward, in more passages. In the top right corner sit critical thinking, experiential learning, initiative and active learning methods. Filter by theme and tap a dot.
Chart 45 and Graph 2, redrawn by us. "How many teachers mentioned it" is our count from Appendix E (interviews with more than 0% of the subtheme). Counting passages shows what recurs, not what matters most: the thesis itself uses the counts only to support interpretation.
The difficulties show up in conversations, almost never in documents
The PPCs talk about active methods and projects. The barriers, the lack of recognition and the ways teachers work around it all appear in the interviews. Tap a layer of the iceberg.
Charts 51 and 52 and sections 4.4.1 to 4.4.4. The iceberg is our sketch: layer thickness measures nothing. What sits below the waterline follows what the thesis says about the PPCs for each subtheme.
Early, as a track or later: where entrepreneurship sits in the program changes everything
Teachers described very different designs across the four years of a Business Administration degree. The more the curriculum organizes the sequence and opens up flexibility (tracks, electives, schedules), the more room the teacher has to innovate. Choose a design.
Sections 4.5.1, 4.5.4 and 4.3.4 and Chart 45 (bars: passages for the four most cited curriculum subthemes). The semesters are our drawing based on the accounts and the PPCs; when a quote only says "first year" or "third year", we colored the whole year.
Five levels, one center: the teacher turns it all into experience
The thesis's main contribution is a model: entrepreneurial education comes from five levels working together. In the middle, the teacher interprets, adapts and translates. Tap a level or run a test.
Figure 11, Chart 57 and sections 5.4 and 6. The cross layout follows Figure 11. Heights are a sketch; the tests summarize what the thesis says about each absence, not a simulation.
Not everything that seems obvious holds up
Four questions about teaching entrepreneurship. Think of your answer and tap the card to see what the research found.
Sections 4.3.2, 4.6.2, 4.6.3, 5.1 and 6, and Chart 56.
Educating entrepreneurs is teamwork: curriculum, teacher and institution
Teachers
Plan each hands-on activity with a clear goal, reflection and follow-up. Projects and challenges teach more when they are not loose ends, and linking theory, experience and the class profile is part of the job.
Program coordinators
Clearer, more coherent and flexible PPCs that guide without straitjacketing: progression across the program, entrepreneurship in several courses and integration of classes, projects and applied experiences.
Institutions
Truly recognize teaching work, offer training and spaces for teachers to exchange ideas, and keep support structures such as incubators and events, so that nothing depends only on individual initiative.
Students
Make the most of what the university offers beyond exams: junior enterprises, student clubs, hubs, mentoring, real projects. In one teacher's words, "soak up" the university environment. · our reading, based on the interviews
What this research does not say
- Only Business Administration programs in Greater São Paulo. Other programs and regions may work differently; the thesis suggests testing the model there.
- No one asked the students. What is said about what they learn comes from teachers and documents; the thesis proposes hearing students and graduates over time.
- Teachers were chosen through referrals and contacts, among people with a track record in the field, which may tilt the picture toward those who already value the topic.
- Counting passages does not measure effects. The research shows how the pieces fit together, not how much each one improves learning. · our note
- Only PPCs and national guidelines: course plans and institutional development plans were left out, and 5 of the 16 institutions had no PPC available.
Credits
MORITA, Marcos Roberto. Formação empreendedora na educação superior: articulações entre currículo, prática docente e processos formativos em cursos de Administração. Tese (Doutorado em Administração de Empresas) — Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, São Paulo, 2026. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Almir Martins Vieira.
The author had a full tuition waiver from Instituto Presbiteriano Mackenzie and declares that artificial intelligence was used only as a support tool, with human review of the whole text. This version simplifies the work for a general audience; the full charts, quotes and references are in the original text (in Portuguese).