Opportunity-focused, high-growth entrepreneurship and science-led innovation are crucial for continued economic growth and productivity. Working in these fields offers the opportunity for rewarding and high-paying careers. However, the majority of youth in developing countries do not consider either as job options, affecting their choices of what to study. Youth may not select these educational and career paths due to lack of knowledge, lack of appropriate skills, and lack of role models. We provide a scalable approach to overcoming these constraints through an online education course for secondary school students that covers entrepreneurial soft skills, scientific methods, and interviews with role models.
The study comprises three experimental trials provided Before and during COVID-19 pandemic in different regions of Ecuador. This catalog entry includes data from Experiment 1: Educational Zone 2/Municipality of Quito 2019-2020. The data from the other two experiments are also available in the catalog.
Experiment 1: Educational Zone 2/Municipality of Quito 2019-2020
In course of Showing Life Opportunities project we conducted a randomized control trial in high schools in Educational Zone 2, Ecuador and Municipality of Quito, Ecuador in 2019-2020; Students finish the program in July 2020. The intervention is an online education course that covers entrepreneurial soft skills, scientific methods, and interviews with role models. This course is taken by students at school (some students finish the program at school during COVID-19 outbreak). We work with mostly 14-19 year-old students (16,570 students). The experimental program covers 126 schools in Educational Zone 2 and 11 schools in Municipality of Quito. We randomly assign schools either to treatment (and receiving the entrepreneurship courses online), or placebo-control (receiving a placebo treatment of online courses from standard curricula) groups. We also cross-randomize the role models and evaluate set of nimble interventions to increase take-up.
The details of intervention can be found in AEA registry:
Asanov, Igor and David McKenzie. 2020. Showing Life Opportunities: Increasing opportunity-driven entrepreneurship and STEM careers through online courses in schools. AEA RCT Registry. July 19.