Study of the Entrepreneurial Attitudes of STEM Students

Abstract

The Entrepreneurial Promotion Programs in Higher Education carry out training activities with the aim of promoting the entrepreneurial spirit among university students. These programs promote skills such as innovation and creativity which improve self-employment among young people, but do not usually modify the entrepreneurial attitude. This work presents the entrepreneurial profile of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) students at the University of Jaén (Spain). The study focuses on the results of the self-diagnostic survey of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism and the DG for Industry and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise. The results have been analysed according to gender, age and Bachelor’s Degree specialty. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and the Pearson’ s correlation test was used for factor analysis and correlations. The results indicate that students have high entrepreneurial attitudes, although there are no significant differences in age and gender. On the other hand, statistically differences have been found based on the engineering expertise area. Students of the specialty in Industrial Electronics Engineering have higher attitudes regarding creativity and innovation that are key for entrepreneurship.

Keywords

• Entrepreneurial attitudes
• STEM areas
• students
• higher education