A Comparative Study of Entrepreneurial Attitudes among Master Students of Entrepreneurship Management and Electrical Engineering of the University of Tehran

Jafari Moghadam, Saeed; Etemadi, Kaveh

A Comparative Study of Entrepreneurial Attitudes among Master Students of Entrepreneurship Management and Electrical Engineering of the University of Tehran

Authors

¹ Assistant Proffessor, Tehran University

² M.A., Tehran University

Abstract

The first training courses on entrepreneurship started in the United States of America in the 1960s. Today entrepreneurship education has been included in the curricula of numerous colleges throughout the world. Considering the significant role that entrepreneurship plays in the economic development and poverty alleviation, the Iranian higher education system helped establish the Faculty of Entrepreneurship whereby the entrepreneurship education at various university levels has been designed and administered as an integral part of curriculum development. In parallel with this new initiative, the entrepreneurial expectations are also rising as the main concern of this paper which is aimed at making a comparison between the alumni in the two fields of entrepreneurship and electrical engineering and computer. The findings are the outcome of the fieldwork activities conducted at the Faculty of Management and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer at the University of Tehran. Information was collected through localized questionnaires which contained items on the characteristics of Iranian entrepreneurship. The respondents were three groups of students, freshmen and senior students of electrical engineering and senior students of entrepreneurship. The outcomes indicate a positive attitude of entrepreneurship management students towards entrepreneurial characteristics after two years (compared with the initial phase of their admission) as opposed to the meaningful significance derived from the attitudes of the two groups of electrical engineering towards the psychometric characteristics of entrepreneurship. Except for the risk-taking indicator, the latter are in a better situation compared with freshmen of entrepreneurship management

Keywords