Entrepreneurial Characteristics of Students in Different Fields of Study: a View from Entrepreneurship Education Perspective

Abstract

The aim of our article is to examine the entrepreneurial characteristics of university students in different disciplines, and to develop implications and recommendations for entrepreneurship education programing according to the observed differences. The main research question is to identify whether students from different selected disciplines exhibit different rates of enterprising potential (i.e. tendency to start up and manage projects), and if so, which are the differentiating attributes. To answer this question we conducted a study using the General Enterprising Tendency v2 Test (GET2 test) and analysed the enterprising potential of 370 university students in four different majors (business administration, applied informatics, psychology and pedagogy). The findings of our analysis suggest that there are significant differences in the general enterprising tendency levels, as well as in levels of three out of five its components (namely need for achievement, calculated risk taking and internal locus of control) between the students in analysed majors. In other words, students in different disciplines exhibit different rates of entrepreneurial predispositions. In our article we present and further discuss these findings, especially from the entrepreneurship education perspective in its broadest sense.

Keywords

• enterprising potential
• entrepreneurial characteristics
• students
• different disciplines
• need for achievement
• risk taking