The Role of Entrepreneurial Education in Reinforcing Entrepreneurial Intentions among University Graduates in Ethiopia: Determinants and Prospect

Abstract

Examination of theory, history, and practices of entrepreneurship education (EE) strongly suggest that EE is believed to have a potential to create strong entrepreneurial intention or may offer entrepreneurship as a career choice among the students. The study involved pre-test and post-test of entrepreneurial intentions of students with the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior. Out of 400 questionnaires distributed among students from Adama Science &Technology University and Admas University, 336 questionnaires were fully filled and used for analysis. The items were built as seven-point Likert type scale, being 1 “Strongly disagrees” and 7 “Strongly agree.” The internal consistency of the instrument was well above the cutoff point of 0.7 (Cronbach’s Alpha = 0.86). The analysis of the finding involved use of descriptive statistics measures and T-test supported by SPSS. Similarly, the aggregate results of comparison of pre and post intention measures clearly confirm that there is no significant intention change observed among respondents after taking the course with few exceptions. The attitudes towards entrepreneurship even before taking the course were moderately high. However, the overall T test result value after taking the course entrepreneurial intention remained unchanged except with very slight variation observed among female students; students with prior business experiences; and students who come from families who own and run businesses. Although the overall impression indicate that most students positively considered entrepreneurship as career option; the majority of the student have no immediate intention to pursue entrepreneurship as most preferred career option immediately after their graduation. In sum, the current course offering for students in both Universities may not bring about intended change in entrepreneurial intention. This might suggest it is worthy to examine whether entrepreneurship education practices in Ethiopian Universities educate about entrepreneurship and enterprise rather than educating for entrepreneurship; whether the curricula, the teaching methods are really in tune with the desired objective of offering the course.