Research On The Influence Of Entrepreneurship Education On University Students’ Entrepreneurial Intentions

Entrepreneurship education can be regarded as an effective generator for national economic growth as well as an efficient engine incubator for the establishment of a creative nation. It plays an irreplaceable role in social progress. Developing entrepreneurship education in universities will nurture and promote entrepreneurship culture and improve social and economic innovation, and thus, push forward the reform of the nation’s economic structure.From the perspective of management, this dissertation takes the triadic reciprocal determinism and the planned behavior theory as theoretical foundation, explores the influence and role of students’attitudes and university entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship, and discovers a functional mechanism for university students with different work values that relate to their entrepreneurial intentions. With4039questionnaires answered by juniors and seniors from21provinces, cities and autonomous regions, this dissertation applies such methods as explorative factor analysis and multiple linear regression to test related hypotheses.There are several major findings from this research. First, the stronger the university students’entrepreneurial intention, the more possible they will start actual entrepreneurial behaviors. Second, the more frequent university students participate in entrepreneurship education and the more satisfied they are with the contents of entrepreneurship education, the higher their entrepreneurial intention are elevated. Third, the course placement of university entrepreneurship education plays a possible supportive and positive role for instigating their entrepreneurial intention. To be more specific, the better in-class education, career simulating practice and entrepreneurial practice are arranged, the more possible these university students will develop their entrepreneurial intention. Fourth, the higher qualities these college teachers of entrepreneurial education present and better result these university students achieve in participating in such entrepreneurial education training, on the contrary, the less likely these university students have entrepreneurial intention. This result means that university students can make rational reasoning and judge the possibilities of their ventures by combining their realities in entrepreneurship education courses to make rational plans and strategies for their career opportunities and reduce blind passion to create any ventures. In this way, the success rate will be remarkably increased. Fifth, students with different work values might make some changes after receiving entrepreneurship education related to entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, for those whose career values are targeted at comfort and security, the more satisfied they are with the contents from the entrepreneur education, the easier they will intensify their entrepreneur intention. However, after participating in some entrepreneurial activities, they tend to reduce their entrepreneurial intention. For status seekers, the more frequent they participate in entrepreneurship education, the better effect they will achieve in their studies. The higher capacities their teachers have, the more likely they would reduce their entrepreneurial intention. However, after they attend entrepreneurial activities, they will increase their entrepreneurial intention. All these research results demonstrate that entrepreneurship education in universities should carry out different education work towards different career value holders. In addition to the above, there are some other interesting findings as follows:(a) geological locations seem to have certain relationship with the university students’ entrepreneurial intentions and actual entrepreneurial behaviors. For those universities which are located in less developed regions, such as mid or western part of China, their students have higher entrepreneur intention and actual behavior than those who come from developed or medium-developed regions.(b) different schools will produce different entrepreneurial intentions and actual behaviors. The in-school diploma-seeking students of comprehensive universities have much higher entrepreneurial intentions and actual behaviors than those from schools focused on agricultural and forest schools, medical or medicine schools as well as finance and business schools.(c) the qualities of schools also make a difference to entrepreneurial intention and actual behavior. Students from "985" and "211" universities have less students with good entrepreneurial intentions and actual behaviors than those who are not from those ranked universities.The implication of the current research can be summarized in four aspects. First, based on triadic reciprocal determinism and theory of planned behavior, this research conducts a theory-driven empirical analysis in regard to the mutual influence between university entrepreneurship education and university students’ entrepreneurial intentions. To some extent, this research fills the gap left by previous environmental studies on entrepreneurial intentions. Second, the research extends the application of planned behavior theory. In previous entrepreneurship research, the subjective variables of planned behavior theory are vague or even neglected, and most studies just focus on individual behaviors or attitudes and perceived behavior control. In this research, two constructs, namely, university students’ attitude factors and college teaching factors, are adopted to analyze the influence of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial intention. With significant statistical results, it manages to expand the scope of planned behavior theory in entrepreneurship studies. Third, applying cross-disciplines knowledge, the current research introduces the concept of career value from social psychology studies and conducts a moderation effect research that analyzes the relationship between entrepreneurship education constructs and entrepreneurial intention, which provides enlightenments for the future entrepreneurial education studies. Fourth, the rich definition of entrepreneurship education is extended into a multi-dimensional construct. Based on the planned behavior theory, this research adopts university students’ attitudes and university teaching from the perspective of entrepreneurship education and tries to analyze the influence entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurial intention. It breaks through the uni-dimensional construct model that takes only entrepreneurial education into account. While extant entrepreneurship education studies generally focus on theoretical discussions and qualitative descriptions, this research manages to fill the gap with theory-driven empirical efforts.The dissertation is structured as follows:Chapter One, as the introduction, describes the background of this research, its topic, significance and methodology, and summarizes the research process and the structural layout of the dissertation. Chapter Two is literature review, describing the theoretic foundation in greater detail. The paper systematically reviews related research results, identifies the insufficiency of previous studies as well as specifies the inspiration from the previous studies for this current research. Chapter Three proposes and builds up a model of supposition and theory. Surrounded with the issue of this research title, the research applies the method of theory deduction and reality observation and proposes a theoretical hypothesis after conducting strict analysis and inference. Moreover, the research builds up a research model for this dissertation. Chapter Four discusses about research design and method, explicitly analyzing the basis of this research design, the design, conduction, distribution and collection process of this questionnaire, the section and evaluation of the research variables and the methodology of this research. Chapter Five conducts empirical analysis and result. Applying the SPSS16.0statistical software, the data analysis and test in regard to the theoretical hypothesis and research model from the previous chapters are conducted. Also results of statistical analysis are summarized and discussed. Chapter Six ends with research conclusions and future forecast. It summarizes the major conclusions and findings, presents major innovations as well as theoretical and practical implications, and also discusses some limitations of the research. Finally, the prospect for the future research is developed.