Author(s): Salma Nader Abbass Hussein, Hadia Abdel Aziz H
Entrepreneurship education has been identified as one of the most critical factors in promoting entrepreneurship over the long run. Accordingly, it is now a main concern in Egypt to implement diverse entrepreneurship education programs across universities. Cognitive style has been the center of attention among researchers and practitioners as an important factor in influencing entrepreneurial behavior. Researchers have grown curious on whether one’s unique educational background could possibly assist in developing a balanced thinking. Accordingly, it is of high interest to explore the role of entrepreneurship education in influencing the degree to which individuals are analytical or intuitive in their cognitive style and the possibility to integrate both. Hence, this research aims to study the impact of formal academic entrepreneurship education on young Egyptian graduates’ cognitive styles. The research design applied is a quasi-experimental post-test-only control group design through a structured survey. A comparative study was conducted between the test group; 333 graduates from private universities who were exposed to formal entrepreneurship major, while the control group is 461 graduates who were not exposed to any kind of entrepreneurship education. The findings signified the effective role of formal entrepreneurship education in promoting future entrepreneurs with effective and balanced entrepreneurial thinking as it was reported that the test group scored significantly higher than the control group on non-linear/intuitive thinking style and balanced thinking style. While the control group scored significantly higher than the test group on linear/analytical thinking style