University Students Entrepreneurial intention: Perception of Commerce Students at Shiraz Region

Iran’s entrepreneurial Total Early-Stage Activity (TEA) among the 51 countries that Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) has studied in 2009 is increased dramatically (GEM Iran, 2010). It is up to the country’s higher education to sustain and enhance this position through development and implementation of an entrepreneur focused curriculum while improving current programs to include entrepreneurial courses and or flavour. Research about attitudes of university students toward entrepreneurship is rare in the Iranian environment; while students’ perceptions has potential to improve university entrepreneurship education and consequently provide support for economic develop of the country. Therefore, this research examines the attitudes of students about impediment and stimulation of entrepreneurial activities in one hand and their perceptions about the component of an appropriate university entrepreneurial curriculum and importance of sources for their future job selection on the other hand. Age, gender and major are considered as independent variables in this study. A sample of 227 accounting, management and economic students from three higher education institutes located at Shiraz region responds to the questionnaire survey. Results indicate that gender; age and major of students are not significantly related to their perception about the importance of barrier, motivation, component of an appropriate entrepreneurial university curriculum and sources of future job selection. They believe that loan and credit and government regulations are the most important barriers while connecting job with passion/hobby and realizing their idea/vision are most important motivation factors. Communication and marketing are considered as the most important component of a university entrepreneurial curriculum while other component of the curriculum such as management, finance and accounting gained a high level of importance as well. When it comes to job selection the most important sources for students are personal experience and background university study.

کلیدواژه ها:

Iran entrepreneurship ، barriers ، motivation ، educational needs ، curriculum components