| Abstract: | Entrepreneurship and small businesses have been designated as the ‚engines of growth‛ because
of their job creating phenomenon, not only in the advanced countries but also developing and
privatizing economies across the globe. Fostering entrepreneurship among university students has
become an important topic among entrepreneurship researchers. The university is an institution,
which students pass on toward working life.
The aim of this study was to investigate determinants of entrepreneurial intensions among newly
established universities of Ethiopia by taking Dire Dawa University as a case study. The paper also
tried to describe the level of students’ entrepreneurial intension, students’ attitude towards
entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial environment created in the university, whether or not
entrepreneurship course delivered in the university created self employment intension.
To do so the researcher applied stratified proportionate random sampling technique in which 690
sample respondents from institute of technology, school of business and economics, school of
social science, school of natural science, school of health and school of Law were taken as a
sample via single population proportion formula of Kish and Leslie. Further primary source of data
was collected via questionnaire from previous entrepreneurial intentions standardized
questionnaires of different scholars. For the sake of analyzing the data Descriptive statistics was
calculated using frequencies and percentages and then Binary Logistic regression analysis with
95% CI was used to assess the relative effect of independent variables on the dependent variable.
The majority (77%) of sample student respondents have no Entrepreneurial intention. In multivariate
analysis, attitude towards entrepreneurship was found to be a statistically significant factor of
student’s entrepreneurial intension. Those who have favorable attitude towards entrepreneurship
more likely to have entrepreneurial intension than those who don’t have favorable attitude towards
entrepreneurship (exp(B)=6.348, 95%=CI 3.28,12.26). better self employment/entrepreneurial
intension was also observed in those students who are willing to take risk than those who don’t in
which those students who have high risk taking propensity almost three time entrepreneurial
intension than those who have low risk taking propensity (exp(B)= 2.67, 95%=CI (1.906, 3.755)).
Similarly those high proactive personality students have 1.57 times self employment intension than
low proactive personality students (exp(B)= 1.57, 99%=CI ((1.293, 2.603)). Participation in
entrepreneurship course also statistically significant in determining students entrepreneurial
intension in DDU albeit those who participate in the course didn’t have that much significant
difference in their self employment intension (exp(B)= 1.04, 95%=CI (0.732, 1.500). Further those
students who have high perceived behavioral control have 4.65 times self employment intension
than low perceived behavioral control students (exp(B)= 4.65, 95%=CI ((2.342, 9.231)).Attitude
towards university entrepreneurial environment was also statistically significant factor for students’
entrepreneurial/self employment intension (exp(B)= 1.1, 95%=CI (0.781, 1.550)) . However,
subjective norm wasn’t statically significant in determining DDU students’ entrepreneurial
intensions.Generally, the over level of entrepreneurial or self employment intensions of students in Dire Dawa
University is too low. Further students perceived the way entrepreneurship course delivered and
entrepreneurial environment created in the university is not satisfactory/ adequate enough to urge
students to pursue entrepreneurial career as an option for their future career.
Key words: entrepreneurial intension, Dire Dawa University, Determinants of entrepreneurial
intension, attitude towards entrepreneurship |
