factors explaining students’ inclination towards...

Journal of Emerging Issues in Economics, Finance and Banking (JEIEFB)

An Online International Monthly Journal (ISSN: 2306 367X) Volume:1 No.4 April 2013

302

www.globalbizresearch.com

Factors Explaining Students’ Inclination towards Entrepreneurship:

Empirical Study of Ethiopian University Students

Buzeye Zegeye

Wollo University, College of Business and Economics,

Department of Management, Dessie –Ethiopia

E-mail: [email protected]

______________________________________________________________________________

Abstract

This study investigates the inclination towards entrepreneurship among university students in

Ethiopia. Specifically, it aims to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship education

and inclination towards entrepreneurship. The influence of demographic characteristics and

family business background on university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship is also

being examined. An empirical test carried out on the data gathered from questionnaires

demonstrates that two entrepreneurship education variables are found to have statistically

significant relationship on the inclination towards entrepreneurship. Two demographic variables

and a family business background variable have an effect on university students’ inclination

towards entrepreneurship. Finally, based on the findings, the implications of the study have been

forwarded.

______________________________________________________________________________

Keywords: Entrepreneurship education; inclination towards entrepreneurship; demographic

characteristics; family business background; University students

mailto:[email protected]



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1. Introduction

Entrepreneurship has become an everyday buzzword. Policymakers, economists, academics

and even University students are talking about it.

Entrepreneurship or doing own business has remained one of the biggest occupations and a

source of income since the earliest economies and markets emerged on the face of earth. In the

primitive and old societies the men who were having various skills like making the simple

weapons used those skills to ensure their continued livelihood and existence.

With the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the range of the products expanded and so did the

range of business opportunities for a potential entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship plays a vital role

for new venture creation; existing venture expansion, social, technological and economic

development of the country (Lumpkin & Dress, 1996).

Today in this very turbulent world economy, self – employment option become as a stable

and an increasingly attractive occupation for one to engage in, particularly where there is

increasing unemployment hardship exists. In Ethiopia self – employment becomes a more

attractive and rewarding career option for the people and particularly for University students.

More specifically, entrepreneurship is a major engine driving many nations’ economic

growth, Innovation and competitiveness (Scarborough and Zimmerer, 2003; Kuratko and

Hodgetts, 2004). As many researches on the areas discloses, there is a strong Positive correlations

between entrepreneurship and economic growth in terms of creating a marvelous job

opportunities both in urban and rural areas, stimulates creativity and innovation so as to transform

technologies, knowledge and skills, expanding as well as ensuring firms survival and its

sustainability. This, in turn, has increasingly made entrepreneurship emerged as one of the most

popular research domain in academic circles to study on the importance and contributions of

entrepreneurship (Lee, Chang et al, 2005).

Courses in entrepreneurship are also becoming a popular at college and university levels

(Brown, 1999). An exponential interest in entrepreneurship studies has increased amongst both

undergraduate and graduate students over the last decade (Solomon, Weaver et al, 2005). One of

the key factors explaining this unparalleled phenomenon is the fact that wages employment or

‘secure’ employment is no longer a guarantee especially in the public sector for university

graduates (Collins, Hannon et al, 2004; Kamau-Maina, 2006; Postigo, Iacobucci et al, 2006). In

addition the luxury thought of university graduates are the elite and intelligent group in the

society, whom can easily acquire a job upon graduation has no longer reflected the realities of

today’s employment world (Seet and Seet, 2006). In today’s competitive job environment, total



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job opportunities are inevitably limited and thus one must compete to secure a job as supply of

jobs is limited. As a result, many graduates are unable to get a job upon graduation. Students are

now apparently searching for a business education that can equip them with the necessary

entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to succeed in running businesses or to create a job from

seizing existing entrepreneurial opportunities (Brown 1999; Henry, 2003).Therefore many

universities and colleges around the world have responded to this demand by introducing

entrepreneurial courses to students in an effort to promote entrepreneurship as well as a

professional entrepreneurship career (Postigo and Tamborini, 2002). For instance, in Ethiopia,

there are 31 Public Universities, various private colleges and Universities that offer courses in

entrepreneurship, even BA degree in Entrepreneurship and Management for many thousands of

students in the country. On top of this, Ethiopian government incumbents were/are conducting

entrepreneurship skills competitions among different entrepreneurs on ETV in 2012 to promote

self-employment and entrepreneurship profession. Many dialogues, forums and training programs

organized by educational institutions (Universities, Colleges, Institutes, schools, Ministry of

Education, Management Institutes of Ethiopia) are all in favor of entrepreneurship development

apart from being the subject taught at colleges and universities (Landstrom, 2005). Definitely, all

these are being done with one major goal, namely to foster entrepreneurial spirit and expect

attitude change in students, after undertaking entrepreneurial courses. Students are also expected

to value entrepreneurship as a personal and future career development alternative (Kantis, Postigo

et al, 2002).

The main objectives of this study are to examine the effect of entrepreneurship education

(independent variable) on Ethiopian university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship

(dependent variable). Particularly, this research attempts to examine the relationship between

entrepreneurship education and university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship. The

specific objectives of the study are;

To examine the effect of “ family business background” and “ willingness to become an

entrepreneur” on the university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship

To investigate the effect of the university entrepreneurship promotion on the university

students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship

To examine the effect of demographic characteristics such as educational background,

previous work experience, sex as well as educational experience of the students families

on university students inclination towards entrepreneurship



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The findings of this research study will make those areas quite clear to our business students,

business people, society, government and university teachers which are demanding some

remedial actions so that the business students are encouraged to pursue their careers by

establishing and running their own businesses. If proper actions are taken and an overall

commitment is gained from everyone to overcome those factors which are serving as barriers to

entrepreneurship ( as reflected in the findings of this study) then the time to come may see the

business students if this region as successfully self – employed. Eventually, entrepreneurship can

be recognized as a highly rewarding and viable career option by the business students of Ethiopia.

2. Literature Review

2.1 The Significance of Entrepreneurship Education

Many research rigorously reveals that the pretention advantage of entrepreneurship

education to foster economic growth of the nation. For instance, Mueller and Volery (2006),

portray the importance of entrepreneurship education in influencing the students’ decision to

become and choosing a future entrepreneurial career. According to Krueger (1993 cited on

TahseenMahmoodet el, 2012) personal attitude towards entrepreneurship are set out by

superfluous factors such as previous experience. According to these research explanations, prior

studies explored that entrepreneurship education and develop a person’s level of self efficacy

(Wilson et al 2007 cited on Ibid). Students participated in entrepreneurship education have shown

more inclinations towards starting their own business (Noel, 1998), because entrepreneurship

education develop a vision among students to start their own business with innovation

(Wilson,2007). To end this, research suggests that universities, [colleges, schools] and

other institutions of higher learning have been given the mandate to play a leading role in

inculcating students with the entrepreneurial knowledge and skills that will be useful in

their future career endeavours (Nurmi and Paasio, 2007). Due to this fact, there is a need

to examine how entrepreneurship education could influence university students’

predisposition to entrepreneurship. Despite the exponential growing research interest in

the area of entrepreneurship education very little research has been specifically

investigated the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial

inclination in Ethiopian university students.

This research, therefore, aimed at to contribute to the current literature by identifying the

variables of entrepreneurship education that influence students’ inclination towards

entrepreneurship by giving a due attention in Ethiopian settings. Taking the above scenarios into



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consideration, this research is investigates if entrepreneurship education can be adequately

influenced Ethiopian university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship, particularly in

Amhara region.

H1: There is a positive relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ inclination

towardsentrepreneurship in Ethiopian university students.

2.2 The Entrepreneurial Course curriculum and content

As contemporary researches in the areas address, exposure to entrepreneurship seems to be a

key factor to develop and foster entrepreneurial profession (Charney and Libecap, 2003; Hannon,

2005). However due to it’s multidisciplinary in nature, perhaps the pedagogical issue of

entrepreneurship is always unfinished discussion (Kent, 1990; Fiet, 2000a; Cooper, Bottomley, et

al. 2004). It appears to be unfinished debate from little uniformity concerning how, who and what

to teach entrepreneurship with regard to its contextual and conceptual understandings despite

entrepreneurship education has been increasingly gained the attention from academia (Falkang

and Alberti, 2000; Raichaudhuri, 2005; Dugassa, undefined) This happens largely due to the four

possible viewpoints held by different people when developing the entrepreneurship programmes:

from the educators’ viewpoints; the students; the programmers and the evaluators (Béchard and

Toulouse 1998, p. 318). Dugassa (undefined), expresses also the same viewpoint that

entrepreneurial curriculum develops differently across universities entrepreneurship within

business courses or a specific courses on entrepreneurship, Educator (University lecturers)

teaching this course have no or less experience over entrepreneurship, the assessment methods is

not different from other courses but which actual must be different. Dugassa (undefined), in his

study on entrepreneurship education in HEIs in Ethiopia found that entrepreneurship teaching and

courses are generally classified into two approaches: courses for entrepreneurship and courses

about entrepreneurship. The decisions on teaching methodologies in entrepreneurship courses are

therefore could be influenced by the aim of the educational objective.

To produce students who are capable to deal with real entrepreneurial activity or to

transform students’ entrepreneurial competencies to practical way is closely centered on courses

for entrepreneurship. While courses about entrepreneurship concerned with teaching

entrepreneurship as a required subject in the syllabus via traditional methods (Gibb

2002(a)).Thus, the major challenge of entrepreneurship in relation to education is the

appropriateness of curriculum and teaching methods in developing students entrepreneurial

competencies and skills (Garavan and O'Cinneide 1994). With regard to the content of the

entrepreneurial courses, Brown (1999) indicates that the entrepreneurship course content should



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be informal with an emphasize more on hands-on teaching methods. He then outlines the core

structure of teaching entrepreneurship courses should draw on:

• Critical thinking

• Reliance on experience – successful courses access students’ skills and needs

• Thinking about entrepreneurship as a career

• Use guest speakers who are experienced entrepreneurs

In response, Vesper (2004) categorizes four kind of knowledge useful for entrepreneurs and

hence the entrepreneurship course content should be developed according to this knowledge:

i) business-general knowledge – it applies to most firms, including the new ventures

ii) venture-general knowledge – it applies to most start-ups, but not so much to going firms

iii) opportunity-specific knowledge – it is about the knowledge about the existence of an un-

served market and about how the resources need to be ventured in

iv) Venture-specific knowledge – it is about the knowledge on how to produce a particular

product or goods in terms of teaching methods, different researchers propose different approaches

in delivering entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to students (Fiet, 2000; Fiet 2000). Hence,

there have been seemed to be lots of approaches to teach entrepreneurship ranging from the

conventional approach such as textbooks (Fiet, 2002), examinations (McMullan and Cahoon,

1979) to unconventional like business plan (Audet, 2000), life histories of working entrepreneurs

(McKenzie 2004); guest lecturers (Brown 1999; Klandt and Volkmann 2006) and field study or

visiting to business organizations (Cooper, Bottomley, et al. 2004). Notwithstanding the

differences in curriculum and delivery approach, the ultimate aim of entrepreneurial programmes

is to stimulate entrepreneurship awareness among students that, in turn, would increase their

interest in entrepreneurship.

H2: The entrepreneurial curriculum and content stimulates students’ entrepreneurship inclination

in Ethiopian university students

2.3 The university’s role in promoting entrepreneurship

Universities play a purposeful role in promoting entrepreneurship education to develop

regional and society economies (Binks, Starkey, et al. 2006; Co and Mitchell, 2006).



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Mahlberg(1996) agrees the remarks by stating that schools and universities have a key role to

play in promoting entrepreneurship since educational institutions are ideally considered the place

in shaping entrepreneurial cultures and aspirations among students while they are studying to

survive in today’s robust business milieu (Autio, Keeley, et al, 1997; Landstrom, 2005). This

could probably because universities are seedbeds of entrepreneurship to teach their students the

way to think and behave entrepreneurially (Bygrave, 2004). Universities, in this respect, should

position themselves as a hub of entrepreneurship by making substantial contributions in nurturing

an entrepreneurial environment that combines factors that contribute to the development of

entrepreneurship (Gnyawali and Fogel, 1994).

As a provider of entrepreneurship training programmes, universities must do all the best it

could to create an entrepreneurially supportive environment that could encourage entrepreneurial

activity in turn would help to develop an enterprise culture among university students who are

tomorrow’s entrepreneurs (Roffe, 1999).

Autio, Keeley, Klofsten, &Ulfstedt (1997) in their study on entrepreneurial intentions of

technology and sciences students across four countries consistently conclude that university

teaching environments are the most influential factors that affect students’ perceptions towards

entrepreneurial career and entrepreneurial convictions. Hence it is important to present a positive

image of entrepreneurship as career option to draw students’ attentions within the university

environment by providing the resources and other facilities available to them. As we have to

always remember that even though individuals have the relevant entrepreneurial knowledge and

skills, if they do not possess positive image about entrepreneurship, they might eventually not

venture into the field (Alberti, Sciascia et al, 2004).

Towards this end, universities, by creating an entrepreneurial culture across campus, are

expected to influence students’ decision to creation businesses with its considerable influential

factor on students. This may due to students’ preferences towards career are easily influenced by

the environmental conditions in which they are interacting with as they are young and always

looking for appropriate models (Gnyawali and Fogel, 1994; Fayolle and Degeorge, 2006).

H3: The role to promote entrepreneurship played by the university increases the inclination of

Ethiopian university students to be more entrepreneurs.

2.4 The entrepreneurial experiential learning programme

The learning process of entrepreneurship should not only confine just to the classroom

discussions but the interaction with today’s dynamic business environment is vital because of

‘critical entrepreneurial skills canonly be developed and refined if they are practised’ (Dilts and



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Fowler 1999, p. 52). This is to enable students to gain hands-on experience by seeing, touching

and feeling about the business world (McIntyre and Roche 1999; Cooper, Bottomley et al. 2004).

For this reason, entrepreneurial internship is seen as a good mechanism to provide students with

such a learning experience in a real business milieu (Dilts and Fowler 1999). Internship as

according to Gault, Redington, &Schlager (2000) is ‘generally part-time field experiences

andencompasses a wider variety of academic disciplines and organisational settings’ with its

main goal to eventually lead students to become self-employed (Dilts and Fowler 1999). Mohd

Shariff, Abdul Mutalib, & Ahmad Fadzil (2000) highlight the objective of having internship

programme is to expose students to the perspectives of industry practical and its nature of work

practices. It is a training strategy that transforms theoretical knowledge to application as well as

develops individuals’ working skills in real career world (Dodge and McKeough 2003). Neill and

Mulholland (2003) point out that the students’ placement and/or work experience programmes is

very crucial for undergraduates as it exposes and prepares a student for the real working

experience and as an external extracurricular learning activity. Having the entrepreneurial

internship programmes offer a lot of advantages for universities, organisations as well as students

(Dilts and Fowler 1999; Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). For instance, students with

entrepreneurial internship experience tend to exhibit lower job dissatisfaction than those without

internship experience (Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). A study by Gault, Redington, &Schlager

(2000) also vindicate that interns who have participated in the internship programmes tend to

have higher career preparation about their jobs and higher level of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

satisfactions. Hence, acquiring applicable entrepreneurial experience does have a positive relation

with individual’s intention and readiness in pursuit of business opportunities because of their

early exposure to business environments (Cooper, Bottomley et al. 2004).

In sum, looking at the benefits of internship programmes to students, many researchers

suggested that entrepreneurial internship programmes should become a compulsory component of

students’ educational structure (Hiltebeitel, Leauby et al. 2000). This, in turn, has made internship

programmes become an important integral part of today’s educational curriculum in preparing

university students towards entrepreneurial career (Raymond and McNabb 1993).

H4: The entrepreneurial internship programme increase the likelihood of Ethiopian university

students’ to be more entrepreneurially-inclined

2.5 Family background

Much research has been suggested the influence of demographic and family background on

individual’s inclination towards entrepreneurship (for example Koh 1995; Koh 1996; Reitan1997;



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Breen 1998; Lin, Picot et al. 2000; Dunn 2004; Smith 2005; Veciana, Aponte et al. 2005;

Kirkwood 2007). The common premise is that a good influence brought by family as well as

personal own experiences about entrepreneurship who contribute to higher entrepreneurial

inclination (Koh 1996; Mazzarol, Volery et al. 1999; Kirkwood 2007). The following

summarized the research that have been scholarly conducted on the demographic characteristics

as well as the family business background on entrepreneurship. With the different results

presenting by previous research, this study particularly controlled the university students’

demographic characteristics and family business background.

i) Gender

ii) Programmes of study

iii) Working experience

iv) Father’s occupation

v) Mother’s occupation

Many studies has recommended the impact of demographic and family background on a

person’s inclination towards entrepreneurship (e.g., Breen 1998; Dunn 2004; Kirkwood 2007;

Koh 1995, 1996; Lin et al. 2000; Reitan 1997; Smith 2005; Veciana et al. 2005). The general

hypothesis is that individual entrepreneurial traits and the good impact brought by family add to

higher intention towards entrepreneurship (Din 1992; Kirkwood 2007; Koh 1996; Mazzarol et al.

1999). Carsrud et al. (1993, p. 53) describe demographics in entrepreneurship study as

demographic means the exploration of the entrepreneurial population by quantitative approach

through the measurement of range, development or turn down of entrepreneurs and

entrepreneurship. Within this narrower description, demography comprises the a range of

principles, societal, organic, psychological, and financial variables used to interconnect particular

traits of the entrepreneurs, their business and the particular behaviors of that population.

Gasse(1982) effectively states the impact of prior work experience : practice may have two unlike

and reverse impact on entrepreneurial mind set. It can give the entrepreneur with a set of guiding

principle or information helpful to performance; it may develop practice that are tough to modify

and may act as barrier to adaptation and improved presentation (pp. 62–63).

H5: Demographic and facilities business background has positive impact of students inclination

towards entrepreneurship among Ethiopian University students.



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Research Frameworks and Hypothesis

Adopted from Otmananeizi, but made some changes by the researcher

3. Methodology

To examine the hypotheses, data was gathered from a self-administered questionnaire

conducted among students in Wollo University, Ethiopia. The unit of analysis was the final year

students in the college of Business and Economics (Five departments i.e. Management,

economics, Marketing Management, Cooperative and Accounting). The questionnaire was

adapted from various sources and used as a means of data collection. It consisted of seven parts:

demographic and family background, future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination, role

models, the university’s role in promoting entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial curriculum and

content, teaching methods for entrepreneurship course(s) and the entrepreneurial internship

programme.

The scales used in the questionnaire was based on a 5-point Likert scale (with 1= strongly

disagree, 2= disagree, 3= no opinion, 4=agree, 5= strongly agree) for each close-ended question.

Prior to conducting the main study, a pilot test was conducted to improve the reliability and

validity of the questionnaire. 400 open and closed ended questionnaires were distributed to all

third year students from the five departments with the help of respective lecturers in classes or

lecture halls. The participation in this study was on voluntary basis and the respondents were

given one week to return the questionnaires. SPSS version 18.0 was used to analyze the data.

Descriptive analysis, a principle axis oblique factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression

were performed to examine the hypothesized propositions. In this study, a reliability coefficient

of 0.50 is set as the criterion of acceptability (Helmstater 1964; Felder and Spurlin 2005). For

factor analysis, as a rule of thumb, factor with higher loadings (greater than 0.3) will be chosen to

represent a factor due to its greater influence and more important (Hair, Anderson et al. 1998).

Role models

Demographic

factors

Future career plan

Exposure to

entrepreneurship

education

Entrepreneurial

inclination Family Business

Background



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3.1 Factor analysis

Prior to major analyses, factor analysis was employed to reduce or regroup the items used in

measuring the following constructs either independent or dependent variables:

_ Future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination

_ Role models

_ The University’s role to promote entrepreneurship

_ The entrepreneurial curriculum and content

_ The entrepreneurial internship programmes

We measured future career planning and entrepreneurial inclination. A principal axis factoring

with the oblimin rotation suggested two-factor solution with four questions were omitted due to

the loadings less than 0.3. For role models, six questions were used to measure the role models.

All the six questions were not reduced into separate underlying variables.

Meanwhile, fourteen items were used in measuring the university’s role in promoting

entrepreneurship in which three were reverse-scored questions.

To measure the entrepreneurial curriculum and content, a principal axis factoring using

oblimin rotation was performed on the fourteen questions, including the three reverse-scored

questions. The results suggested that two-factor solution was appropriate. Finally, for the

entrepreneurial internship programmes, eleven items were used with three items were reverse-

scored questions. One item was extracted due to factor loadings less than 0.3 and thus ten

questions were loaded into the same factor.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the respondents

Variables Characteristics No. of the respondents

(N=400)

Percentage 100%

Personal

characteristics

Age 18-25 350 87.5

26-34 20 5

34-42 10 2.5

42-50 20 5

Total 400 100%

Sex Male 250 62.5

Female 150 37.5

Total 400 100%

Marital status Single 350 87.5

Engaged 0 0

Married 50 12.5

Total 400 100%

Father’s Entrepreneur 100 25



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business

Background

Employed 100 25

Unemployed 200 50

Total 400 100%

Mother’s

Business

background

Entrepreneur 50 12.5

Employed 50 12.5

Unemployed 300 75

Total 400 100%

Entrepreneurial

work experience

2years 25 6.25

0-2years 50 12.5

0years 325 81.25

Total 400 100%

4. Analysis and Results

The respondents’ profiles out of 400 usable questionnaires, the respondents were heavily in

favor of females with 37.5 per cent (N=150) compared to males with only 62.5 per cent (N=250).

As all of the respondents were studying at the undergraduate level, they were mostly aged

between 18 to 25 years old, with 87.5 per cent (n=350), a respondent was aged 26-34 were 5 per

cent (n=20), respondents was aged 34-42 were (n=20). When comes to the respondents’ working

experiences, 2.25 per cent (n=25) have had 2years working experience, 12.5per cent (n=50) had

1year working experience (n=325) had no work experience. Pertaining to the respondents’

parents’ working status, most of their fathers have been working as farmers (unemployed) (50 per

cent; n=200) and their mothers who were unemployed (or households) (75 per cent; n=350). Self-

employed (entrepreneur) and employed was ranked in the second higher by the respondents for

their fathers’ current occupations (25per cent; n=100 and 25 per cent, n=100 respectively) and

self employed mothers (12.5 per cent, n=50) as well as mothers employed to other organizations

(12.5 per cent, n=50).

Table 2: Factor Analysis for key variables

Main variables and questions Factor

loading

Entrepreneurial inclination α =0.803)

1. Seriously considered entrepreneurship as a highly desirable career option.

2. Never thought of entrepreneurship as a career choice.

3. Have the planning for opening a new venture.

4. Won’t start a business because it is too risky and I am afraid of failing.

5. Would like someday to start my own business.

6. Could easily pursue a career involving self-employment.

0.764

0.749

0.737

0.682

0.597

0.482



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7. If pursue a career involving self-employment, the chances of failure would be

very high.

8. Prefer to work in a big organization rather than a small firm.

Image of entrepreneurship (α=0.636)

1. Entrepreneurship is about job creation

2. Entrepreneurship is an honorable profession and I respect people who are

entrepreneurs.

3. Admire those who succeed in running their own business.

The university’s role to promote entrepreneurship (α=0.794)

1. University is an ideal place to learn about starting a business.

2. More entrepreneurship and business educational programmes on campus would

help students to start businesses.

3. Entrepreneurial or business related examples are included in classroom teaching.

4. Students are encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship ventures in the university.

5. The university infrastructure and policies discourage entrepreneurship.

6. Get to meet lots of people with good ideas for new businesses.

7. People are actively encouraged to pursue their own business ideas.

8. My university course prepares people well for entrepreneurial careers.

9. There are no student clubs on campus which promote entrepreneurship.

10. University has infrastructure in place to support the start-up of new businesses.

11. A creative university environment inspires me to develop ideas for new

business.

12. Entrepreneurial activities are limited only to business students.

13. Entrepreneurship courses should be made compulsory in order to stimulate

entrepreneurial spirit in campus.

14. The university provides resources to assist student entrepreneurs

The entrepreneurial curriculum and content α=0.828)

1. The instructors are experienced and competent course presenters.

2. As a result of taking this course, have better understanding about business.

3. The instructor did a good job of making this course relevant to the real world.

4. The course developed entrepreneurial knowledge and skills.

5. The instructor did stimulate interest in entrepreneurship through the course(s).

6. Interest towards entrepreneurship has been raised after taking the course(s).

0.428

0.305

0.728

0.713

0.389

0.583

0.547

0.542

0.521

0.489

0.470

0.477

0.475

0.466

0.452

0.450

0.377

0.363

0.364

0.653

0.656

0.647

0.628

0.627

0.580

0.550

0.511

0.508



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7. The course(s) provided a new and different experience.

8. The course(s) taught to deal with ambiguity in the real world.

9. The course(s) provided an opportunity to learn by doing.

The entrepreneurial internship programmes( α=0.754)

1. Feel confident about tackling unfamiliar work-based problems.

2. Help to develop the ability to plan and organize my day-to-day work.

3. Help to develop my job-related skills.

4. Provides me with a lot of new business ideas.

5. Did not learn much from it.

6. Help to develop my problem-solving skills.

7. Had lots of real business experiences that are not found in the classroom.

8. Was used as cheap labor.

9. Develop my communication skills.

10. Did not increase my practical business knowledge.

0.651

0.618

0.618

0.566

0.575

0.552

0.500

0.446

0.440

0.409

Table 3: Means, standard deviation and matrix correlations

Variables Mean S.

D

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Entrepreneurial

inclination 3.74 0.6

4

1

Programmes of

study

0.48 0.5

1

.117

**

1

Father’s

occupation

0.34 0.4

7

.104

*

-

.067

1

Mother’s

occupation

0.12 0.3

3

.157

**

.020 .220

**

1

Gender 1.66 0.4

6

.167

**

-

.115

**

.152

**

.018 1

Working

experience

1.15 0.3

6

.207

**

.090

*

.023 -

.044

.166

**

1



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Image of

entrepreneurship

4.43 0.4

1

.238

**

.100

*

.127

**

.113

**

.019 -

.020

1

Role models 3.80 0.4

6

.112

*

-

.060

.087

*

-

.045

.092

*

.016 .198

**

1

The university’s

role topromote

entrepreneurship

4.13 0.3

5

.301

**

.180

**

-

.026

-

.051

-

.049

.019 .019 .294*

*

1

The

entrepreneurial

internship

programmes

4.29 0.3

8

.154

**

.022 .056 .051 .066 -

.062

.202

**

.149*

*

.317

**

1

The

entrepreneurial

curriculum and

content

4.14 0.4

1

.320

**

.215

**

.006 -

.019

.032 .013 .311

**

.244*

*

.618

**

.296

**

.336

**

1

N= 400; ** p<0.01; * p<0.05

Table 3 presents the means, standard deviations and inter-correlations for the above scales

and demographics well as family business background variables coded as dummy variables. It is

observed that male students and students with self-employed parents have higher inclination

towards entrepreneurship. In addition, university students with working experiences were more

inclined towards entrepreneurship than those without the experience. The role of universities in

promoting entrepreneurship is highly correlated to the entrepreneurial curriculum and content as

well as image of entrepreneurship. Interestingly, from the correlation matrix, all scales have a

statistically significant correlation with entrepreneurial inclination.

Hierarchical multiple regression is designed to test hypotheses where two steps are involved.

Demographic characteristics and family business background are controlled first. Step two

involved both the control and independent variables. The entrepreneurial inclination is the

dependent variables. The results of the hypothesis testing are shown in Table 4. In step 1, when

the control variables are included, the model explains 10.4 per cent of the variation in

entrepreneurial inclination (R2=0.104). However, in step 2, after adding the independent

variables to the model, it explains an additional 11.8 per cent of the variation in entrepreneurial

inclination. This change in R2 is significant, F(6, 405)=10.223; p<0.001. The results of the

analysis demonstrate that the role of universities in promoting entrepreneurship (_=.152, t=2.498,

p<0.05) and the] entrepreneurial curriculum and content (_=.172, t=2.905, p<0.01) are the two

significant independent variables. Therefore, the Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 were supported.



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Table 4: Regression results on entrepreneurial inclination

Model 1 Model 2

Program of the study 0.119* 0.045

Father’s occupation 0.054 0.040

Mother’s occupation 0.149** 0.152**

Gender 0.140** 0.131**

Work experience 0.179*** 0.184***

Image of entrepreneurship 0.090

Role model -0.007

The University’s role in

promoting entrepreneurship

0.152*

The entrepreneurial internship

program

0.024

Entrepreneurial content and

curriculum

0.172**

R2 0.104 0.222

Adjusted R2 0.093 0.201

∆R2 0.104 0.118

F value for ∆R2 F(5,411)=9.534 F(6,405)=10.223

From Table 4, it is found that gender (β=.131, t=2.859, p<0.01), working experience

(β=.184, t=4.043, p<0.001) and mother’s occupation (β=.152, t=3.320, p<0.01) are statistically

significant for the demographic characteristics and family business background. When the other

demographic and family business background variables were controlled there was a positive

relationship between gender and entrepreneurial inclination, suggesting that, as expected, males

have higher inclination towards entrepreneurship.

Those students with working experiences have higher inclination towards entrepreneurship

which is expected as the previous studies. However, the results show no significant between

students’ programmes of study and inclination towards entrepreneurship. Surprisingly, father’s

occupation was also not statistically significant in relation to student’s inclination towards

entrepreneurship in comparison to mother’s occupation.



318


5. Discussions

The purpose of the study was to investigate the university students’ inclination towards

entrepreneurship among Ethiopian university students. The researcher hypothesized those

different variables that play significant role or impact towards entrepreneurial inclination. In

addition, the researcher posited a relationship between entrepreneurship education and

entrepreneurial inclination, entrepreneurship inclination and demographic and family business

background variables. In general, the results of the analysis provide empirical supports for the

position played by the university in promoting entrepreneurship (Edwards and Muir 2005;

Postigo, Iacobucci et al. 2006; Nurmi and Paasio 2007). It is positively correlated to

entrepreneurial inclination. This relationship may be attributable to the increasing demands from

students to seek for quality education from educational institutions that could equip them with the

entrepreneurial competencies in preparing them for future careers.

Moreover, universities are ideally considered the place in shaping entrepreneurial cultures

among students while they are studying (Mahlberg 1996). Hence, it is important for universities

to provide entrepreneurially friendly environment in encouraging and fostering entrepreneurial

culture.

In doing so, universities must be able to design and/or develop the curriculum that would

fulfill the students’ demands as well as the industry. Furthermore, the exposure to entrepreneurial

courses would certainly, to some extent, influence students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship.

The findings added to the body of entrepreneurial study regarding to the Universities role in

promoting the importance of self-employment. The researcher could find that the universities

promotion has positively influenced the students to incline towards entrepreneurship. Another

important finding is that experiential learning is highly encouraging students to focus on creating

their own job. The researcher therefore could suggest that universities teaching methodologies

must focus on field visit, inviting entrepreneurs as guest to the class speaker to share his/her

experience.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, university students’ inclination towards entrepreneurship is examined together

with several related variables. The results of the analyses indicated that two entrepreneurship

education variables, i.e. the university’s role to promote entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial

curriculum and content along with gender, working experience and mother’s occupation are

statistically significant. These results are anticipated to have certain implications to both

universities and students alike. The changes of the recent roles played by universities, at one



319


hand, are much needed in order to create an entrepreneurial environment in an effort to fostering

entrepreneurship among students. On the other hand, students must be ready to be able to swift

their current learning approach to a more practical way which is required in the entrepreneurial

learning process. The findings of the results could also hope to shed some new insights to the

current entrepreneurship literature particularly in Ethiopian settings. The finding of this study

supports the finding of some previous studies, for example Tahseenmahmood et al

(2012),OoiYengKeat et al (no defined), and others.However, this study is not without its

downstream. One of the major limitations of this study is being case in its study nature and as a

result, its finding may not help for general conclusion.

7. Recommendations

Having the finding in the mind, the researcher recommended the following;

The ministry of education must revise the mode of course delivery for entrepreneurship

from lecture to experiential learning

The University must revise the content of the course entrepreneurship

The course entrepreneurship must be included in every department course syllabus

The university leaders must promote more the importance of entrepreneurship to their

students

University leaders and teachers must work on empowering female students on top of

males

The course of entrepreneurship should be included in every syllabus across all

departments

Acknowledgement

My sincere thanks are due to the two Anonymous Reviewers for their useful insights and

comments which greatly helped me to improve the manuscript.

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