Entrepreneurship education as a driver of entrepreneurial intentions amongst university students

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has received much recognition worldwide in both the academic and corporate fields, mainly due to its contribution to job creation and economic development. Entrepreneurship education was identified across the literature as one of the key drivers of entrepreneurship intention. For this purpose, Jena (2020) argued that entrepreneurship education is a good predictor of how competitive a country’s economy is. However, in South Africa, few studies have been conducted on entrepreneurship education offered in local universities. This study, therefore, sought to investigate the impact of entrepreneurship education on students’ entrepreneurship intentions. A survey was conducted with a sample of 197 undergraduate students selected from two public universities in Durban. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 27. The findings of the study concluded a strong positive significant relationship between entrepreneurship education and students’ entrepreneurial intentions (r = 0.79, p < 0.01). However, regression analysis concluded that subjective norms are a good predictor of students’ entrepreneurial intentions compared to entrepreneurship education (B = 0.347; t = 3.785; p < 0.01). Based on these results, policymakers, university management, and curriculum developers should promote entrepreneurship education and focus more on its design for effective results.