FACULTY AND RESEARCH

This article examines current practices in the University of Corte (France) designed to boost entrepreneurial intent among its students. Based on years of experience by key university practitioners, the article proposes a framework for evaluating the perceived effectiveness of entrepreneurial programs in higher education institutions. We conducted qualitative interviews with experts to collect empirical evidence about the perceived effectiveness of initiatives in developing entrepreneurial intent at Corte University. Lexical analysis is applied to understand certain nuances of the discourse of the interviewees. The hundreds of paragraphs of transcript were finally clustered around fourteen key enabling factors of effective entrepreneurial environments, which served as the basis for a pilot online survey with key stakeholders. Based on the conceptual and empirical analysis, the study found three Strategic Enablers, eight Pedagogical Enablers and three Operational Enablers for effectively developing entrepreneurial intent among higher education students. These enablers form the basis for a three-dimensional evaluation framework to investigate the perceived effectiveness of entrepreneurship programs.