Authors : Stephanny Sylvester Maluda; Rosima Alias

Volume/Issue : Volume 7 - 2022, Issue 3 - March

Google Scholar : http://bitly.ws/gu88

Scribd : https://bit.ly/3N6HSkO

DOI : https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6374918

Abstract : Engineering is a premier career choice among students in higher education institutions but there is a growing number of engineering graduates in unemployment and underemployment. Due to that, entrepreneurship education has been introduced to engineering students with the hope that this could improve their entrepreneurial self-efficacy and subsequently leading to greater intention to become self-employed. This descriptive study involved a total of 292 engineering undergraduates selected via purposive sampling from four higher education institutions in Malaysia. Using adapted measurement scales from past studies, the interrelationships among entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention were investigated. Based on a structural equation modeling with partial least square, data were analyzed quantitatively to test the direct and indirect relationships among these variables. Findings indicated that entrepreneurship curriculum and university support contribute significantly and positively to enhance entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention but not teaching methodologies. Further to that, entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediated the relationships of entrepreneurship curriculum and university support with entrepreneurial intention but not teaching methodologies. The overall structural model yielded 38.2% and 69.8% of predictive accuracy to explain entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention respectively. In comparison, entrepreneurship curriculum has a greater effect size compared to university roles while teaching methodologies had negligible effect size to explain entrepreneurial selfefficacy and entrepreneurial intention. The study also concluded that entrepreneurial self-efficacy has a large effect size on entrepreneurial intention. Hence, these findings implied the need to focus on the adequacy and relevance of entrepreneurship curriculum and encourage greater intervention from the university in promoting entrepreneurial intention among students. Additionally, there is a dire necessity of improving teaching methodologies to improve students’ engagement in entrepreneurship learning activities. Future studies should explore in greater detail about students’ preference for learning entrepreneurship effectively and other aspects of entrepreneurship education.

Keywords : Entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurship education, engineering undergraduates, entrepreneurship curriculum, teaching methodologies, university support.