| Summary: | Entrepreneurship is on everybody’s lips nowadays; government is engaging and throwing its weight behind entrepreneurism. Today the question to occupy the minds of the politicians who are pro-development of the citizens of South Africa (SA) should be how to place South Africa on a higher economic growth path that benefits all. It is questions like this one that really challenge the status quo, and demand that the South African government together with its citizens roll up sleeves and deal with the twin challenge of unemployment and poverty (NPC 2012:40).
The study recognised as a problem the fact that there is no synergy between government, business and HE (Dempsey, Gore & Fal, 2011:6). However, the study confined itself to the entrepreneurial activity within HE and NWU in particular. Some questions were raised, like: how aware NWU students were about entrepreneurship, whether there were entrepreneurial programmes offered at NWU, if there was enough support for these entrepreneurial programmes and were students intending taking on entrepreneurship as their career choice upon graduating. The study tried to address these questions; some of them were answered quantitatively while others were addressed through literature review.
The primary objective of this study was to determine North-West University students’ intentions to take entrepreneurship as a career choice. A primary and respondent population (N=200) of NWU BCom students were tested. Prior to conducting the main study, a pilot test was conducted to improve the reliability and validity of the questionnaire. Fifty-two of the Vanderbijlpark version of questionnaires were randomly distributed with the help of respective lecturers to target respondents in lecture halls as well as students in computer laboratories.
SPSS version 20.0 was used to analyse the data. The reliability statistics from the pilot study was found to be very high, i.e. a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.887. The data from the main study was subjected to factor analysis in order to test the reliability and validity in this North-West University sample. The responses from the participants in the study were also subjected to Principal Component Analysis, which allowed inter-correlations between the factors to be revealed. Simple descriptive analysis was conducted to interpret the level of scores obtained from the respondents on entrepreneurial intentions. Multiple regression analysis was done and a mathematical model which simulates the results of the study was constructed.
The model shows among other things that entrepreneurial inclination increases with an increase in entrepreneurial internships. This result has some implications for the university, in that the university will need to arrange for its students to complete an entrepreneurial experiential period before being conferred a qualification in entrepreneurship.
The study conceded that the findings are applicable specifically within the characteristics of the sample and the study region, i.e. university students at North-West University; therefore, extrapolation to other universities remains speculative. === Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.
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