An Empirical Research On The Relationship Between Education System Flexibility And Alumni Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship has been studied extensively in recent decades and many scholarshave done research on many aspect of entrepreneurship. However, the relationshipbetween the flexibility of education system and alumni entrepreneurship is an aspectwhich less scholars paid attention to. This paper conducts research on the influence ofthe flexibility of education system on alumni entrepreneurship under the background ofthe great changes of Chinese economy and society.Through reviewing on relative research, this paper finds that most of the studiesabout education system were qualitative analysis, and there were few quantitative ones.Under the background of the credit system reform, which took place in TsinghuaUniversity (one of the top universities in Mainland China) in1984and is more flexiblethan the school year system, this paper begins to do research on the relationshipbetween the flexibility of education system and alumni entrepreneurship.Using data collected through survey responses from2,512alumni of TsinghuaUniversity who graduated between1930and2007, this paper conducts research on theinfluence of the credit system reform on alumni entrepreneurship. Using Logistic andCox regression models, this paper presents empirical findings on both entrepreneurialintention and entrepreneurial activity. The empirical results verify the three hypothesesof the paper:(1) there is a positive relationship between the credit system reform andalumni entrepreneurial intentions;(2) the credit system reform contributes towardincreasing the probability of actual entrepreneurial activity amongst alumni;(3) afterthe credit system reform, students who had lower GPAs at school are more likely tostart new businesses (by testing interaction effect of credit system reform and GPA onentrepreneurial activity).The models in this paper also control entrepreneurs’ personal traits. The resultsshow that those who are male, who used to be a leader, who used to studied in differentdisciplines and those who worked in an industrial and commercial enterprise havestronger entrepreneurial intention. Alumni who do not have a master’s degree, and whoare overseas returnees are less likely to start new businesses.On the theoretical aspect, this paper expands studies on entrepreneurship anduniversity education system reform, and provides new evidences for the research on entrepreneurs’ personal traits. On the practical aspect, this paper can provide referencefor education system reform and the entrepreneurs’ entrepreneurial activity.