The effect of practical entrepreneurship education in South Africa. Student entrepreneurship promotion through Enactus Entrepreneurial Projects

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 79%, Tshwane University of Technology, language: English, abstract: This study investigates the effect of practical entrepreneurship education through Enactus entrepreneurial projects. Despite government initiatives such as the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) and Small Enterprise Development Agency (SEDA) aimed at improving entrepreneurship in South Africa (SA), two phenomena are characteristic: (1) the country is among the least entrepreneurial nations; (2) Unemployed graduates¿ lack of interest in entrepreneurship exacerbates high unemployment rates. Consequently, universities are incorporating practical entrepreneurship education into their curricula.
Enactus South Africa, as a typical example of university intervention into the problem, was studied with regard to its effect on student¿s entrepreneurship intentions. The thinking is that, without access to jobs, entrepreneurship invariably becomes the alternative. Research into this phenomenon is still limited, and existing literature provides equivocal results.

The study took the form of quantitative research, to enable the researcher to collect data which would answer best the research question in hand. The findings of the study suggest that there is a positive relationship between Enactus entrepreneurial projects and students¿ entrepreneurship intentions. The research design was supportive in constructing the entire framework of the study. The study was descriptive in nature as essentially it aimed to determine the effect of the phenomena on Enactus students.
The population drawn on was Enactus SA, but the sample was taken from the Enactus National Competition 2013, which meant that only students who were representative per Higher Education Institution were sampled. It cannot therefore be assumed that the findings are generalizable to all Enactus SA students.