The influence of higher education on entrepreneurial attitudes

Abstract

The objective of this work is to characterize the influence of higher education on the entrepreneurial attitudes of undergraduate students by documenting their dynamic traits of innovation, risk propensity, and personality, as well as psychological and demographic aspects. For that purpose, the process was divided into 4 dimensions with 75 items. The data of students enrolled in four different universities were collected in situ. This study adopted the technique of artificial neural networks and an adjusted Multilayer Perceptron (MP) by means of the software Economática. The results show that the development of the entrepreneurial process is mainly determined by three aspects: (1) their hands-on training, which enables students to apply their knowledge at local companies and organizations or incubate businesses at their institution; (2) receiving additional income by participating in research projects; and (3) playing sports.

Keywords

• University teaching
• neural network
• university students
• entrepreneurship
• entrepreneurial intention
• entrepreneurial education