A study of entrepreneurial intentions of students at FET colleges in South Africa.

[摘要] Purpose: The aim of the study is to measure entrepreneurial intentions of studentsin their last year of study in Further Education and Training institutions (FETs) inSouth Africa. The study explored the impact of the following aspects on EI: personalbackgrounds (gender, study discipline, and entrepreneurial family backgrounds);geographical location; and the self-assessed supportiveness of the contextualenvironment. Lastly, the strength of association between antecedents toentrepreneurial intentions and EI itself were also explored.Design: A questionnaire was administered to 360 final-year students undertakingtechnical and entrepreneurship-related studies at FETs in four different provinces inSouth Africa. Regression, Stepwise regression, ANOVA, t-test, and correlationmatrix analyses were conducted to test the proposed relationships.Findings: FET students generally exhibit high levels of entrepreneurial intentions.Gender, study discipline and geographic location have no direct influence onentrepreneurial intentions. Entrepreneurial family background, however, exerts asignificant influence on entrepreneurial intentions. Furthermore, conviction has thestrongest association with entrepreneurial intentions compared with the otherantecedents that were tested, that is, general attitudes, image of entrepreneurshipand FET supportiveness.Research limitations: The use of cross-sectional non-experimental design does notallow for conclusions to be drawn regarding causality. Only five FETs participated inthe study; therefore, the generalisability of the findings to all FETs nationally islimited.Practical implications: The study indicates high levels of entrepreneurial intentionsin circumstances where literature has found the opposite findings. It thereforebecomes critical to find integrated teaching methods that take into account the SouthAfrican environment in order to harness the high entrepreneurial intentions ofstudents.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand