The Role of Entrepreneurship Education and University Environment on Entrepreneurial Interest of MBA Students in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an economic panacea, which engenders employment generation and economic development. This becomes so important at this time when many countries including Saudi Arabia are facing the challenges of unemployment in their economies. Among the goals of Vision 2030 is to reduce unemployment and increase the participation of private sectors in Saudi Arabia. Thus, this paper investigates the role of entrepreneurship education and university environment on entrepreneurial interest among MBA students in Saudi Arabia. The data is obtained from the survey conducted among the MBA students in the College of Business at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University. Using ordered logistic regression model, the results reveal that variables ‘I have taken entrepreneurship course before (X1)’, ‘Entrepreneurship course has enhanced my practical managerial skills in order to start a new business (X3)’ and ‘The knowledge of entrepreneurship in my university has enabled me to know the actions I need to take to start my own business (X6)’ are statistically significant and have great likelihood of influencing students’ entrepreneurial interest. This study suggests that Saudi government should make entrepreneurship course compulsory for all fields of study as it has a significant impact on the entrepreneurial interest of students as well as challenge the university environment to fully use the entrepreneurship centres within the university to encourage students to engage in entrepreneurship activities right from school.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship education; university environment; entrepreneurial interest; MBA students; Saudi Arabia; unemployment; logistic regression.

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/10-4-05