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This study investigates entrepreneurial intention and culture within higher education. More specifically, the degree of entrepreneurial intention and culture with students in different study disciplines and the differences between them are explored. Additionally, the relationship between intention and culture is assessed. A total of 578 students participated in an online survey measuring entrepreneurial intention and culture at various faculties of KU Leuven. Entrepreneurial culture is operationalized through three cultural patterns of beliefs towards entrepreneurship: perceived appropriateness, perceived consistency and perceived effectiveness. To answer the first research question the difference in the average value of entrepreneurial intention and culture between the faculties is explored using analysis of variance (ANOVA), supplemented by a multiple comparison test to compare the specific disciplines for each scale. To answer the second research question, the correlations between entrepreneurial intention and culture were assessed for each faculty. The results show significant differences in the degree of entrepreneurial intention and culture in general but through paired comparison differences are only found for a minority of the disciplines. In addition, results show that all three of the cultural patterns of beliefs show a low but significant correlation with entrepreneurial intention, with the strongest correlation between intention en perceived consistency. The correlation between entrepreneurial intention and culture thus mainly depends on the specific pattern of beliefs.

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During the last decades, work-related learning has become increasingly important, organisations and individuals have to keep learning to stay competitive. Work-related learning has a more considerable role for early-career employees: The changes and new experiences on the first job can trigger learning. Although all early-career employees will need to adjust their competences, this will probably be more important when the employee experiences a mismatch between the job and the educational background. In this situation they possibly experience a larger need to learn at work. This fit between education and job can be vertical (i.e., the educational level is the same as the required level of the job) and horizontal (i.e., the educational domain is the same as the domain of the job). The research question of this study was “What is the relation between job-education fit of graduate students and work-related learning in their first job?”. The main hypothesis was that employees without a job-education fit will learn more at work in comparison with employees with a job-education fit. This hypothesis was derived from the decision-making process of the potential learner of Baert, De Rick, and Van Valckenborgh (2006). It was stated that employees with a misfit will experience a higher educational need and therefore form a stronger learning intention and participate more in work-related learning. The present study offered a more fine-grained understanding of this relationship between job-education fit and work-related learning. It contributed to previous research on this subject in three ways. First, both vertical and horizontal fit were addressed. Second, the job-education fit of the respondents was determined with the objective (i.e., an external assessor determines the fit) and subjective (i.e., the respondent him- or herself determines the fit) method. Lastly, a broad range of work-related learning activities was included. In this research, work-related learning was divided into three scales: formal, interpersonal informal, and non-interpersonal informal work-related learning. To test the hypotheses of this study Mann-Whitney tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests were executed. The statistical analyses did not confirm the main hypothesis, results pointed out that employees with a job-education fit learn more at work. This result can be explained by the argumentation that employees need a certain basis of competences to learn at work, work-related learning activities do not simply replace the missing educational background. It is suggested that future research could include other, personal factors such as job satisfaction, interest or the belief in one’s own capacities, to explain the relationship. Lastly, it was concluded that including both horizontal and vertical fit, the use of the objective and subjective method and the inclusion of formal and informal learning activities contribute to a nuanced representation of the relationship between job-education fit and work-related learning.