The effect of entrepreneurship education on student's entrepreneurial intentions at a South African Public University

Abstract

The research problem for the study was the low entrepreneurial activity in South Africa that leads to high unemployment rates. The research question wanted to investigate the effect that entrepreneurship education may have on the students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Intentions were measured because the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which was employed as the framework, postulates that intention is the best predictor of behaviour. The study also investigated the effect of social norms on the students’ entrepreneurial intentions; whether the students who have self-employed parents and/or have personal entrepreneurial experience, would show higher levels of entrepreneurial intentions than students with a different background. A quantitative research design was employed to answer the research questions, and to test the hypotheses. An online survey was sent to the entire target population and anonymous responses were received. This was important and ethical as it protected the respondents’ identity. A total of 92 responses out of 1 743 students were received, and 73 were complete. The collected data was analysed using a Stata 15 statistical package. The study found that entrepreneurship education does indeed have an effect of raising the students’ entrepreneurial intentions, attitudes and their perceived entrepreneurial skills gained from studying entrepreneurship. The students who come from communities where entrepreneurship is less prevalent showed the highest gain in intentions, attesting to the effect of education in an open distance learning context on their intentions. The students’ entrepreneurial background did not show any effect on their intentions; those who have self-employed parents did not have higher intentions than the students with a different background. To increase the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education, it is recommended that more practical ways of teaching entrepreneurship should be implemented. It is also recommended that entrepreneurship education should be extended to more students, and particularly to science and engineering students. This is because the latter are more likely to produce innovative products that will lead to high growth, high impact businesses that will employ more people for longer, therefore raising entrepreneurial activity and reducing unemployment.