Entrepreneurship Education and Entrepreneurial Behaviour

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, , course: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, language: English, abstract: This study examined whether entrepreneurship education offered in higher learning institutions in Tanzania trigger the adoption of an entrepreneurial behaviour. The aim of the study is to provide the understanding on why there is low participation of female with undergraduate degree in entrepreneurial activities. Building on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, various factors influencing entrepreneurial intention were tested. Specifically, the factors which influence entrepreneurial intention include: curricula, teaching methods, family back ground and institutional environment. Longitudinal research design was used and data was collected from 188 female students from the Institute of Accountancy Arusha and Kampala International University, Dar es Salaam College. Various techniques such as descriptive statistics, T-Test, Chi-Square were used to analyse the data. Basing on responses, the research revealed that entrepreneurship education has a positive effect on students' personal attitude and perceived behavioral control of students on the intention to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship curricula, teaching methods and environmental conditions of the institutions do influence the entrepreneurial intentions of students to become entrepreneurs in the future. Specifically, Kampala International University students were more inspired (100%) to be entrepreneurs in the future by entrepreneurship course contents and entrepreneurship teaching methods than the Institute of Accountancy Arusha (77%). It is recommended that educators continuously improve their teaching methods and teaching styles, in order to accomplish this, they must assess the effectiveness of the teaching approaches; And if they wants to encourage students to be entrepreneurs, then they have to adopt experiential approaches rather than stick to traditional lecturing.