ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION: DOES MALAYSIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL PROVIDE THE PLATFORM?

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is getting wider attention recently with increasing globalization and also the saturation of the job market due to the recent downturn in the various economies of the world. Malaysia is also placing more emphasize on entrepreneurial towards accelerating the economic growth. This study is meant to analyze to what extent the importance of entrepreneurship is well perceived by secondary school students. A personally administered questionnaire survey was executed to collect data from 1722 students represented by various schools from 7 districts in Terengganu, Malaysia. Their combinations were further represented in term of rural versus urban area. The study looked at the personal, finance, social, knowledge management, and school curriculum serves as determinants of entrepreneurial intention. All the determinants were found to be positively correlated with entrepreneurial intention among the secondary school students. Further analysis on testing of differences demonstrated that in term of courses attended at school, levels of education, and geographical location (urban versus rural) revealed the result of differences, while analysis on gender indicated of no differences between the groups towards intention to venture into entrepreneurship.