The aim of the article was to identify the socio-economic determinants of entrepreneurial behaviour of academic youth, including personal characteristics and social skills, motives for the decision to start their own business, as well as factors conducive and hindering its implementation. Issues related to entrepreneurship, broadly defined, are among the important and yet frequently undertaken research areas, not only by economists, but also by representatives of other disciplines, including management, finance, sociology or psychology. The study uses the literature on the subject, as well as the results of an empirical study carried out in 2017 among 1,189 students of SGGW in Warsaw and 488 students of the Pedagogical University Commission of National Education in Kraków. The comparative analysis shows that the most important motives for starting a business included students’ ability to pursue their own passions, independence and self-reliance, while the main barriers included lack of knowledge about starting and managing a business and too high costs of running a business. Respondents expected support in terms of access to business and economic knowledge as well as recognition of the possibility of obtaining funding to start a business.