Students Career Attitudes towards Entrepreneurship

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume II, Issue VI, June 2018 | ISSN 2454-6186

Students Career Attitudes towards Entrepreneurship

H.M.W.M. Herath^#, T.G.A.H.C. Amarawansha^#

 ^#Department of Management Sciences, Uva Wellassa University, Badulla, Sri Lanka

Abstract: – Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in current business arena. Starting from the top government officials to the bottom level people, importance of these concept coming to the stage in various aspects. Even the degree programmes related to entrepreneurship offered by government and private universities develop students’ entrepreneurial attitudes. Although all these effort are done to enhance the entrepreneurship culture among University students, still they have confusing mind to start up an Entrepreneurial career in their life. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the problems associated with students’ entrepreneurial career and what are the factors that help to change their minds towards entrepreneurial career aspirations. In order to identify this problem, data was collected through the entrepreneurial graduates of Sri Lankan Universities. The size of the sample was 100 students. A structured questionnaire was used to collect relevant data. The questionnaire employed a 5-point Likert scale. According to findings, 89% of students have emphasized that they are not willing to take the risk associated with the new ventures. Majority of the students have explained that they are having negative attitudes towards Entrepreneurship due to lack of Practical awareness about business, Experiences received through Parents Business, Career aspirations of friends and relatives made them to rethink about starting up the Entrepreneurial career. In order to overcome these issues which are associated with Entrepreneurial mind-set of students, universities should address these issues in prominent manner.

Key Words: Entrepreneurship, Attitudes, Career, University Students, Career Aspirations

I. INTRODUCTION

Entrepreneurship is became a key topic in every aspect of business within last decades. Entrepreneurship can be defined in various ways due to the broad nature which carries by it. According to Maneesh and Rina, (2016) Entrepreneurship is just like a path of opportunity exploration and managing the risk to create value for profit or social good in our existing environment. As per Kidane and Harvey, (2009) Entrepreneurship leads to the creation of small and medium scale businesses, providing employment opportunities, income generation, uplifting the standard of living, and utilisation of human, material and financial resources of a country in the right direction. Due to mentioned reasons, the concept of entrepreneurship has become a key element in academic research activities, conferences and course curriculums. Many countries have placed more importance in developing the programmes towards development of Entrepreneurship. In Sri Lankan context, it has been vastly scattered in government and private education institutes since it become a popular concept within every corner of the world.

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