Students' propensity to entrepreneurship: an exploratory study from Greece

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide evidence on the entrepreneurial propensity of a sample of 364 Greek students, who, at the time of our research, attended classes at a specific University of Economics and Business Studies. Our findings demonstrate that almost half of the students surveyed (46.5%) were positively disposed towards entrepreneurship despite any difficulties that they could probably encounter in the pre- and early-startup phase of their business venture. One third of the respondents (34.7%) reported that they already had an idea of the type of business they desired to establish. However, the majority stated that they were insufficiently prepared to become self-employed. In conclusion, there is much scope to designate and ameliorate entrepreneurship courses across the curricula of the specific university; such efforts could be further enhanced through more targeted longitudinal research in Greece and other South European countries, which face similarly increasing graduates' unemployment levels.