ATTITUDE OF THE YOUTH TOWARDS ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A CASE OF NAKURU COUNTY
Jane Wanjiru Ndungu - School of Business, Kenyatta University, Kenya
Dr. Abel Anyieni - School of Business, Kenyatta University, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Attitude means a feeling or an opinion about something or someone or a way of behaving that is caused by this feeling or opinion. Knowledge of entrepreneurship is likely to shape the attitude of the young people and motivate them to start their own business or come up with new innovations in the future without just expecting to end up in the white collar jobs or being employed. Over the years the young people have been found to favour being employed rather than coming up with their own businesses or being self-employed. This brings the question of what could be the cause for the attitude of the young people towards entrepreneurship. This study was an assessment of the attitude of the youth towards entrepreneurship in public tertiary institutions offering technical Courses in Nakuru County. The study was looking into factors that affect the attitude of the young people towards entrepreneurship. The personal traits and external factors were the independent variables while the attitude towards entrepreneurship was the dependent variable. The external factors like culture, education, infrastructure, and environment were some of the factors that were looked into as influencing attitude towards entrepreneurship. The social learning theory, the Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory and the Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour and were adopted for the study. The study was carried out in two public tertiary institutions that offer technical courses in Nakuru County and this was a representative of other institutions in Kenya at the same level. The Institutions were Kenya Industrial Training Institute and Rift Valley Training Institute of Science and Technology both located at the outskirts of Nakuru town. The research design used was case study method. The population consisted of one thousand five hundred students. Purposeful method and simple random sampling methods were used to select the institutions and a sample of 450 students. Data was collected using questionnaires. The validity of the instruments was ensured through constructive criticism from the supervisor. The results and discussions were presented using tables, charts and graphs. Parents and guardians of the respondents were found to have a great influence on the choices of courses that the respondents took in the institutions. It also came out that most families of the respondents run businesses at home but majority of the respondents were not involved in the running of the businesses. Lack of finances, long procedures of acquiring businesses licenses and high rates of interests charged on loans to start came out as the main challenges that would influence the attitude of the respondents towards entrepreneurship. Communication network and electricity did not seem to have a significant impact on the attitude of the students towards entrepreneurship. The study recommended the need to start training in technical and entrepreneurship subjects from as early as primary schools to help in cultivating young people’s entrepreneurial attitude at an early stage. The study also recommended that curriculum developers need to include subjects with the entrepreneurial component in the primary and secondary curriculums so that the students can start developing the entrepreneurial culture at an early age A similar study including more stakeholders like the parents/guardians to find out their role in influencing the attitude of the young people towards entrepreneurship should be carried out.
