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Chapter 51
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8468-3.ch051
Enterprise as a Career Choice:
A Multi-National Study
ABSTRACT
Youth unemployment is growing throughout the world due to a collection of conditions including but not
exclusively: economic restrictions, anachronistic teaching and learning methodologies, and inadequate
career guidance structures and support. These factors are the usual suspects and ofer all stakeholders
an easy way out in terms of the challenges associated with business start-ups and business initiations.
That the contemporary educational environment is not efectively geared to support the emerging en-
trepreneur and is severely constrained by the limits of teacher training and curriculum fexibility is well
recognised. With the growing demand for graduates to embrace an entrepreneurial ethos, the impact of
support structures on the development of students is becoming more central to the required discourse in
higher education, more especially, in developing countries without efective welfare structures. Central
to this debate is the role of student attitudes towards the entrepreneurial route as a viable and achievable
alternative to the conventional career pathways. Demands to generate a return from their education,
familial expectations, and the need to develop as an individual can act as a further encumbrance to the
embrace and exploration of business start-up opportunities. This study has generated a dataset of the
dominant student attitudes to enterprise as a career pathway and general perspectives on enterprise
and entrepreneurial activities. Through a number of partners, a cross section of students were invited
to take an online survey addressing questions pertaining to entrepreneurship.
Andre Mostert
University of East London, UK
Abdulbasit Shaikh
Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Pakistan