Students’ Priority on the Entrepreneurship Program Success: A Basis for Restrategizing Entrepreneurship Approach

Entrepreneurship plays a significant role in pursuing economic diversification to address too much reliance on oil and gas which was estimated in 2012 to last for 20 years. Entrepreneurship program/education was introduced to various higher educational institutions across all programs and disciplines to encourage and equipped the students to engage in a business that can also address increasing unemployment through job creation. However, most of the students preferred to be wage employees. A focus group was created and identified student priorities which are categorized according to Opportunities, Motivation, and Incentives. 243 out of 658 Advanced Diploma and Bachelor students of UTAS-Shinas were selected through a combination of purposive sampling and simple random sampling. A survey questionnaire was used to gather data on student priorities or factors using a 5-point Likert scale and the data were analyzed using sample mean and two-tailed independent sample t-test. Results showed 62.14% of the respondents preferred to be wage employees. Respondents also agree that opportunities and incentives contribute to entrepreneurship success however, respondents do somewhat agree that motivations could contribute to entrepreneurship success with a mean of 2.69. Results suggest that there is a statistically significant difference in the response based on academic level, after graduation preference, and existing (family-owned) business with a p-value of p=0.013, p=0.002, and p=0.005 respectively except gender p = 0.064. The result signifies that while students’ priority leads to entrepreneurship program success, respondents greatly rely on the sustainability and the intensity of future monetary benefits and economic incentives. Though the academic and government/private finance and technical support elements of the model may be assumed to work perfectly, the success of the entrepreneurship program warrants collaborative effort to initiate a paradigm shift on students’ priorities/factors.