A review of students’ way of thinking towards self-employment and the role of entrepreneurial education (the case of mekelle university students)

Nowadays, across the globe in general and Ethiopia in particular, public structures (Governmental vacancies) are on saturation point beyond which they can’t carry new staffs. Alternatively, the government of Ethiopia is largely emphasizing on the self-employment and encouragement of citizens by establishing small and micro enterprise agencies across the country. On top of this, the government has started praising individuals or unions who come up with new business ideas, new markets, new products etc. On the other hand, individuals, specifically university graduates, are interested to be employed by the public sectors. Therefore, this study was targeting at assessing the willingness of students to start own business by emphasizing the students’ attitudinal characteristics towards self-employment and the entrepreneurial education. To collect relevant data, 200 third year (graduating class) students were selected from five departments under the college of business and economics. A mixture of probabilistic and non-probabilistic sampling technique was employed. Two data collection instrument, structured questionnaire and focus group discussion, were used. The major findings of the paper were; students whose parents are self employed and have higher education level shows more tendencies towards self employment than others. Plus to this, it was found that the university learning process contributes very little to the self-employment notion. The society’s attitude towards self-employment is still at its lowest level. High risk and shortage of start-up capital were also mentioned as the perceived barriers to establish own business. But, government commitment and facilitation for the advancement of small and micro enterprises was mentioned among the top opportunities to set a venture.