Entrepreneurial Tendencies of Tanzanian University Graduates

Abstract

Entrepreneurship plays a key role in social-economic development of developing countries such as Tanzania where both poverty and unemployment are high. The relationship between unemployment and entrepreneurship is double-faceted. On the one hand, the literature has established that unemployment stimulates entrepreneurial activity, which has been termed as a “refugee effect”. On the other hand, literature has recognized that higher levels of entrepreneurship reduce unemployment; this has been termed as the “Schumpeter effect”. This paper is built within the Schumpeterian effect-theory, which emphasizes that, entrepreneurship reduces unemployment. In order for graduates to become entrepreneurs, positive attitude or tendency towards entrepreneurship is required. Persons with higher entrepreneurial tendencies are said to have positive inclination towards entrepreneurship. It is in this viewpoint that the government of Tanzania has accentuated entrepreneurship training programmes within universities countrywide, in order to empower graduates and facilitate their entry into business; so as to gradually transform them into job creators. Despite government initiatives, very few graduates have managed to start their own businesses. This paper presents findings from a survey conducted to measure among other things, entrepreneurial tendencies of University graduates. It tries to establish whether or not the entrepreneurship training programmes had increased entrepreneurial tendencies of graduates. The General Enterprising Tendencies Test and the independent-samples t-test were applied. The sample size comprised 308 graduates who were clustered into two clusters namely those who studied entrepreneurship (119) and those who did not study entrepreneurship (189). The findings indicate that graduates who had studied at least one entrepreneurship course during their undergraduate studies had higher entrepreneurial propensity and had clear aspirations of becoming entrepreneurs in future than those who studied normal degree programmes. This paper recommends that Universities and other higher learning institutions countrywide should make entrepreneurship training compulsory to all students.