The influence of entrepreneurship education on Malaysian graduates

Abstract

The potential economic benefits of entrepreneurship have tempted governments and education institutions to embed entrepreneurship in the formal education system. Although past studies have failed to conclusively link education and entrepreneurial behavior, there seems to be a general belief that entrepreneurship education increases students’ intention to become entrepreneurs, help them to identify opportunities and increase the number of business they start. However, there is no standard model to depict the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship. Hence, determination of entrepreneurship education’s impact on students is challenging and results of impact studies can be misleading and/or incomparable from one to another. The current study combines the ideas of trait and behavioral school of thoughts to develop a model which relates entrepreneurship education and graduate entrepreneurship. The trait approach seems to indicate that entrepreneurship is the privilege of those who are born with certain characteristics and education will not help to create entrepreneurs. Behaviorists, in contrast argue that entrepreneurship is a rational action. Since education can condition one’s thinking process, it is deduced that entrepreneurship education can result in entrepreneurship. However, one’s thinking capacity is limited and often times, personality influences even the most rational decision maker. Considering the above, the current study extends the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to test the impact of entrepreneurship education on university graduates. The suggested model proposes that entrepreneurship education is a premeditated act and the relationship between entrepreneurship education and intention to become an entrepreneur is mediated by subjective norm (SN), attitude towards entrepreneurship (ATE) and perceived entrepreneurial control (PEC). Entrepreneurship education is also hypothesized to influence proactiveness. To address the methodological gap in the extent literature whereby only entrepreneurial intention is often tested instead of the actual act of founding a business, this study adopts a mixed-method approach, combining a pre and post-test survey method with a qualitative interview. Data for the pre-test survey were drawn using stratified sampling of five public universities and four private universities of different categories. Respondents of the survey are final semester undergraduate students of full-fledged bachelor of entrepreneurship program, business program students with at least one entrepreneurship course in their program requirement and students of programs which have no entrepreneurship course at all. The respondents to the pre-test survey were again approached between six to 36 months after graduation to test whether their views towards entrepreneurship have changed. The results of both surveys confirm the hypothesized relationship between entrepreneurship education and SN, ATE, PEC and proactiveness but the mediation effect of SN, ATE and PEC in the relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention is only partial. Surprisingly, moderation tests show that it is business program which moderates the relationship between SN, ATE, PEC and proactiveness to entrepreneurial intention and not full-fledged entrepreneurship program. Interviews with selected respondents of the two surveys further reveal that business students are more alert of opportunities available and are quicker to capitalize on them compared to their counterparts from full-fledged entrepreneurship degree program. The latter are found to be more timid and too careful in weighing their business start-up options.