رابطه بین پشتیبانی آموزشی و اهداف کارآفرینی در موسسه آموزش عالی مالزی

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between educational support and entrepreneurial intention of MARA Professional College students. The psychological model based on Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour was used to identify the factors influencing the entrepreneurial intention of these students. The study analyzes the relationship between educational support towards entrepreneurial intention. Data were collected via questionnaire from 183 students of three different programmes offered in MARA Professional Colleges. The study utilized correlation and regression statistics to analyse the data. The finding of the survey shows that there is a significant relationship between attitudinal factor(r=0.5324), behavioural factor (r=0.5668) and educational support(r=0.6241) towards entrepreneurial intention. Educational support contributed 40.8% to attitudinal factor and 57.6% to behavioural factor. All three factors (attitudinal, behavioural and educational support) contribute 43.3% towards entrepreneurial intention among MARA Professional College. It is suggested educational support through professional education in these colleges is an efficient way of obtaining necessary knowledge about entrepreneurship. The result of the study has valuable implications for policy makers in Higher Education Division, college administrators and educators.

Entrepreneurial education has primarily occurred in Mara Professional College Malaysia. Students from various academic programmes are educated in the foundations of entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and attitudes (Autio et al 1997;Gatewood et al., 2002; Hisrich, Langan-Fox & Grant, 2007; Mumtaz et.al., 2010). Significant amount of money have been spent to design a viable entrepreneurship education for the students enrolling to these colleges. The current situation is that after 3 years of following business and entrepreneurship based programmes, the students’ interest in pursuing self-employment seemed to dissipate (Salmah et.al 2007; Zuraidah 2010 & Mumtaz et al 2010). However, it is unknown whether contextual founding conditions or rather personality traits that drive students’ intention to self-employment . This factors mentioned above will be useful to policy makers to design effective programmes (Autio et al 1997). Further; none of the studies in Malaysia have established the relationship between the variables (educational support , attitudinal factors, behavioural factors) demonstrating a significant gap in knowledge. Due to this current situation, there is a desire to address the following research questions : i. Does educational support contribute towards attitudinal factors (personality traits, locus of control, curiosity) to be an entrepreneur. ii. Does educational support contribute towards behavioural factors

The traditional research stream on entrepreneurial behaviour has emphasized psychological and nonpsychological factors to explain why someone start a new firm. The psychological factors, or traits perspective, addresses several human attributes, such as the need for achievement (McClelland, 1961) desire for independence (Cromie, 1987), internal locus of control (Cromie and Johns, 1983; Cromie, 1987), and self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997). The non-psychological factors are event based and determine the behaviour of the individual. Individuals act according the constraints and possibilities of the situation they found themselves in. The entrepreneurial event approach stresses that intentions are a robust predictor of individual behaviour such as starting a new firm (Ajzen, 1991; Krueger, 1993). This study shows that purposeful education enhances students’ entrepreneurial intention by providing them with attitudes, knowledge and skills to cope with the complexities embedded in entrepreneurial tasks such as opportunity seeking, resource assembling and leading the business to success (Wilson, Kickul & Marlino, 2007). Formal entrepreneurial education provides students experience of mastery, role models, social persuasion and support by involving them in hands-on learning activities, business plan development and running simulated or real small business (Fiet, 2000; Segal, Borgia & Schoenfeld, 2005). This finding concurs with Lussiers and Pfeifer’s (2001) findings, where entrepreneur with higher education level, industrial and managerial experience, and business exposure have greater chance of succeeding in their business. Students participation in entrepreneurial training programmes has been associated with changes in attitudes and intentions towards entrepreneurship and these trainings need proper teaching strategies compatible with the studentcentred approach (Kuratko 2005). This is because the development of students’ entrepreneurial intention will be affected by the entrepreneurial instructions they received such as team oriented method and learning-by-doing hands-on activities (Rasmussen & Sorheim (2006) ; Frank et. al. (2005). Wood and Bandura (1991) suggested higher education teaching and learning should focus on providing mastery experience or repeated performance accomplishment. The current study illustrated that proper entrepreneurship education exposure will enable students to have positive image in choosing entrepreneurship as a career. Entrepreneurship education, needs a different teaching pedagogy in which entrepreneurship education is linked to work-related learning (Dwerryhouse 2001), experiential learning (Kolb 1984), action-learning (Smith 2001) and entrepreneurial training (Gibb 1999). This is in line with the steps taken by Mara Higher Education Division in offering entrepreneurship courses to all students so as to improve their entrepreneurial intention as suggested by Peterman and Kennedy (2003) and Souitaris, Zerbinati, and Al- Laham (2007) who found that exposure to entrepreneurship education increases entrepreneurial intention. Emphasize is also given to teaching pedagogy and lecturers are send for training to equipment them with these pedagogical knowledge. There are many ways to offer entrepreneurship education. If the objective is to provide understanding of what entrepreneurship is about, the most effective way to achieve this objective is to provide information through public channels such as media, seminars or lectures. These methods are effective in terms of sending the relevant information to a broader population in a relatively short time period. If the objective is to equip individuals with entrepreneurial skills which are applicable directly to work, the best way to deliver the education and training is via vehicles such as industrial training. However, if the objective of education is to prepare individuals to act as entrepreneurs, the most effective technique is to facilitate experiments by trying entrepreneurship out in a controlled environment, for instance through business simulation or role playing. (Hytti and O’Gorman 2004). This study also found that the industrial training programme made compulsory for all programme and the changes made in the programme by introducing students to business simulation by MARA policy makers concurs with Hytti and O’Gorman (2004). Although there is no consensus on the content and structure of entrepreneurship education, the findings of current study showed that Higher Education Institution should, at least, “encourage the development of creative ideas for being an entrepreneur”, “provide the necessary knowledge about entrepreneurship”, and “develop the entrepreneurial skills” through educational support such as pedagogical, syllabus and co-curricular activities. It is clear that education and training are among the most important elements in the development of human resources. The previous studies in literature also indicate a link between education and entrepreneurship. It has been found that the probability of entrepreneurial intention is higher for students who have entrepreneurial skills, recognizes opportunities to start up, have received specific information, and considered that their education institutions are giving a positive support to entrepreneurship (Galloway and Brown 2002; Gorman and Hanlon 1997; Henderson and Robertson 2000). It is suggested that the whole set of education and training activities within the educational system which provides adequate knowledge and inspiration for entrepreneurship develop in the students’ intention to perform entrepreneurial behaviours and possibility of choosing an entrepreneurial career might increase among young people. This had supported Shapero’s (1982) findings where it was argued that attitudes toward entrepreneurship should partly derive from prior exposure to entrepreneurial activity and affect intentions through changing attitudes. It is obvious that this result confirms the key role of educational support in the development of entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, in the light of the current study, it might be stated that entrepreneurship can be fostered as a result of a learning process.