International student mobility & university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems

Abstract

This study aimed to understand Brazilian undergraduate students’ perceptions of an entrepreneurial university ecosystem, consider ing the dif ferences between students who did and who did not experience an exchange period abroad during their undergraduate course. The importance and effects of student mobility has been studied by several authors, and this study contributes to this corpus by analy zing the case of Brazil and also by connecting student mobility with U - BEE. We analyzed secondary data from a survey which was structured by Brazilian students ’ organizations in order to understand undergr aduate students ’ perceptions on the university entrepreneurial ecosystem . The survey was sent to about 10.000 university students in Brazil, obtaining 2. 8 7 6 valid cases. Twenty components of a U - BEE were extracted from the previous authors’ study’s and students were asked to grade them in terms of importance (1 = least important; 5 = most important). We then performed a Mann - Whitney U test to identify statistically significant differences in answers of exchange and non - exchange students. The results point out that students who experienced a peri od of study ab road value mostly the aspects related to the interaction and creation of synergies between the university and the external environment, especially the business sector, while students with no exchange experience value mostly the internal aspects, that is, w hat the university offers so that entrepreneurship is encouraged . More than international mobility initiatives , the incorporation in universities of these characteristics valued by exchange students and also non exchange students might bring more value to the Brazilian U - BEE and foster entrepreneurship.