Although the legal framework, tax system and fiscal requirements are not the most predictable and stable, and the typical start-up founder dedicates 10 hours a day to growing the business, Romania is not entrepreneurship-adverse. It is among the countries whose youth are open to the idea of becoming entrepreneurs and has a high number of self-employed people.
The educational system is preoccupied by introducing entrepreneurial education across all the training levels – in different formats – including compulsory and optional disciplines within the curricula, extracurricular activities, inter-disciplinary approaches, regional and institutional initiatives, projects and competitions.
A wide range of free training materials is available and, in some cases even financing mechanisms.
The ‘practice enterprise’ method proved to be a success among technological high-school students and there are also a few powerful social actors outside the formal education system who are providing free entrepreneurial education opportunities and resources.
All those elements represent a great advantage - however - a series of limitations which cannot be ignored are still present.
The Romanian education system is a centralized one, but this doesn’t necessarily mean there are no great disparities between different regions and especially between rural and urban IVET institutions. Many resources do exist and can be implemented as extracurricular activities – but this depends entirely on teachers’ volunteering and willingness to get involved.
On the other hand, most of the approached are mainly theoretical – training courses, counselling, etc. However, VET students could seriously benefit from more practical approaches – such as prototyping centers within IVET training schools (those, with few exceptions, only exist within universities). They could create innovative products according to their professional qualification and then apply the theoretical entrepreneurship knowledge to create a business, sell them and raise capital for further activities. However, there is no clear legal framework for such approaches, and in most cases neither financing opportunities or material base as many of the technological schools have poorly equipped laboratories and no resources to invest in raw materials.
Another aspect is represented by the fact that some programs, including the ‘practice enterprise’ are only accessible to technological high school students from specific specializations (such as economic, services, commerce), although students with basic qualifications could also benefit from setting up social enterprises within their communities or becoming self -employed – as in some cases, rural areas do not provide massive employment opportunities.
The IVET system could benefit from more practical, hands on approaches, also addressed to students enrolled into basic qualifications programs – which would be complementary to the already existing initiatives.