Predictors of Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Quasi-Experiment Comparing Students Enrolled in Introductory Management and Entrepreneurship Classes

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of enrollment in an entrepreneurship course, as well as evaluates several covariates, in the prediction of entrepreneurial intentions by comparing students enrolled and not enrolled in a class in entrepreneurship. The impact of enrollment was influenced by the perception of support factors and attitudes toward entrepreneurship at the beginning of the semester, as well as awareness of challenges faced by entrepreneurs and the perception of barriers to entrepreneurship at the end of the semester. Contrary to hypothesized directionality, the awareness of challenges was positively related to entrepreneurial intentions, suggesting that awareness of such challenges arose from students' interaction with active entrepreneurs serving as guest speakers. INTRODUCTION Entrepreneurship is an important part of the economic landscape, providing opportunities and jobs for huge numbers of people. Hundreds of thousands of new businesses are established each year, thus creating millions of new jobs (Kuratko, 2005). To prepare future business owners, the number of college-level courses and programs in entrepreneurship has increased dramatically in the past 35 years, and the trend continues. Colleges and universities offering such courses rose from only six in 1967 to 400 in 1990 (Solomon & Fernaid, 1991) to 1,600 by 2003 (Katz, 2003). Clearly, universities are striving to meet the educational needs of those intending to become entrepreneurs. While the number of students taking such courses continues to increase, they represent only a small percentage of all business students. Katz (2007) reported that 125,000 students enrolled in at least one college-level class in entrepreneurship and another 125,000 took a class in small business management. However, the U.S. Department of Education (2008) reports total U.S. college enrollment at 14,257,000 in 2007. Using these numbers, we find that less than 2% of college students are enrolled in entrepreneurship or small business classes. Further, we estimate that the vast majority (perhaps 90%) of business majors who complete the core curriculum have as their only exposure to entrepreneurship perhaps 10 or fewer pages in the typical introductory management course textbook and virtually none in the core course textbooks of other business disciplines. Therefore, students enrolled in entrepreneurship courses are still a tiny minority of all college students, and students not taking courses in entrepreneurship typically receive little instruction in the area. Given the large increase in the number of entrepreneurship course offerings in colleges, Edwards and Muir (2006) ponder what it is that students who study entrepreneurship hope to gain from their learning. We expand upon this notion as we seek to understand the impact of enrolling in an entrepreneurship course and various other attitudes and perceptions on students' entrepreneurial intentions. To our knowledge, there are no existing published studies comparing entrepreneurial intentions of non-entrepreneurship students to entrepreneurship students. Thus, this study examines whether entrepreneurship courses added to the college curriculum have any impact on students' entrepreneurial intentions post-course. THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTIONS Theory of Planned Behavior Since Wicker's (1969) initial review of research examining the relationship between attitudes and behavior reported that attitude was a poor predictor of actual behavior, social scientists have sought to improve the predictive power of attitudes. Specifically, Ajzen (1985, 1991), Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), and Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) have developed integrated models of behavioral intentions. Perhaps the most researched of these models is Ajzen's (1985, 1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB). According to the TPB, behavior that requires planning can be predicted by the intention to adopt that behavior. …