Effect of Entrepreneurship Education on Students Orientation Towards Entrepreneurship at the Malawi Polytechnic

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has proliferated in universities following empirical studies linking it to entrepreneurship practice. The University of Malawi introduced entrepreneurship and innovation course to the bachelor of business administration programme and aims to make entrepreneurship a core module across academic programmes. This study assessed the effects of the entrepreneurship and innovation course on the entrepreneurial orientation of students thereby joining research into the investigation of the effects of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurial orientation of students. A questionnaire was administered on a class of 58 students before commencement of the course and at the end of the course delivery to assess movement in students knowledge about entrepreneurship, attitudes towards entrepreneurship, subjective norms, self efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions that could be attributed to entrepreneurship education holding other factors constant over the period of study. The study found that entrepreneurship education positively effects students knowledge about entrepreneurship and their self efficacy; the self confidence in skills and competences that they can engage in entrepreneurship successfully. The study however found weak correlation between entrepreneurship education and students attitudes towards entrepreneurship and their entrepreneurial intentions and did not find any relationship between entrepreneurship education and students' subjective norms. Although attitudes, subjective norms and self efficacy are factors that influence intentions,which are an antecedent of behaviour within the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the study found that entrepreneurship education positively and significantly effects self efficacy only within this framework.