Attitude of university students to entrepreneurship

Abstract

As Joseph Schumpeter once put it, direct outcome of the efforts by the entrepreneurs is to do new things or do things differently. Promotion of the entrepreneurship plays an important role in the society and there is proven direct relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth. Universities should be one of the pillars to build business environment and support the students in business. The aim of the article is to evaluate the students’ relationship with business. Attitudes by the students and barriers they face when starting business are examined, as well as different types of the students’ relationship with business activities. With this regard a survey has been taken out among 739 students of Tomas Bata University in Zlín in 2016, and three hypotheses connected to the subject of research have been identified and tested. Majority (about 90%) of the students stated that they never had their own business. 4.7% of the students own business during their study period, and 3.4% were in business in the past, but had already left it. There is a significant group of the students without any personal experience with entrepreneurship, who do not have entrepreneurs in their family. This group represents 67.4% of all the respondents. We may presuppose that this group is less inclined to run business. Such an assumption is in line with the practical findings of other experienced mentors. We also found a sound difference in the interest to start own business between undergraduate and graduate students: more students at the bachelor’s programmes are interested in kicking up their business (about 40% «no» and 60% «yes») than those in the master programmes (70% «no» and 30% «yes»). Results obtained led us to the conclusion that there is a need for large extension of entrepreneurial education and support for the university students in the Czech Republic.