Entrepreneurship in Education

Abstract This paper analyzes the importance of entrepreneurship in education. Originally, the entrepreneurship model is an economic model. But, nowadays, as educational domain became more attractive for entrepreneurs and technological changes created new opportunities for autonomy, de-centralization, and customization in educational systems, entrepreneurship is a reality in education too. The new forms of education, such as virtual schools or online courses stimulated entrepreneurs to invest in education in the same mode as they would initiate businesses in domains more market oriented. They take risks to invest in education and are known as ‘edupreneurs’. In the first part of the paper is discussing the role of entrepreneurship in education emphasizing the idea that education is a domain in that innovation is promoting and producing all the time and, due this, a domain of entrepreneurship. In the second part of the paper the new concepts of edupreneurship and edupreneur are used to express the essence of entrepreneurial initiative in education and to emphasize significant issues of educational entrepreneurship. In the last part various forms of edupreneurial initiative are presented. The conclusion of the paper is that edupreneurial initiatives may represent viable solutions for the problems that schools and school managers are facing nowadays.