Profiling the factors affecting the entrepreneurial intention of the egyptian universities students

Abstract

Students intentions toward being an entrepreneur is considered as a good way for

economic growth; this can be done by creating new businesses and new jobs which in turn

will solve one major problem in Egypt, which is the unemployment problem. Therefore, it is

important to make sure that university students are qualified and have the required and

needed skills, characteristics and competencies. These qualifications make them being able to

start and manage their own businesses in the future as different studies show the role of

entrepreneurship education on increasing the entrepreneurial intention among university

students. According to the Egyptian context, the paper aims to provide different propositions

about the effect of entrepreneurship education on increasing the intentions of Egyptian

universities students, the main psychological characteristics that an entrepreneur must

possess, and testing the appropriateness of the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen 1991) in

explaining the intention. The paper relies on exploratory methodology to reach testable

research propositions through review of relevant literature, analysis of secondary data and

qualitative research conducted with concerned parties.