Analysis on Determinants of Students Self Employment Intension in Newly Established Universities of Ethiopia: The Case of Dire Dawa University

Entrepreneurship and small businesses have been designated as the “engines of growth” because of their job creating phenomenon, not only in the advanced countries but also developing and privatizing economies across the globe. Fostering entrepreneurship among university students has become an important topic among entrepreneurship researchers. The university is an institution, which students pass on toward working life. The aim of this study was to investigate determinants of entrepreneurial intensions among newly established universities of Ethiopia by taking Dire Dawa University as a case study. The paper also tried to describe the level of students’ entrepreneurial intension, students’ attitude towards entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial environment created in the university, whether or not entrepreneurship course delivered in the university created self employment intension. To do so the researcher applied stratified proportionate random sampling technique in which 690 sample respondents from institute of technology, school of business and economics, school of social science, school of natural science, school of health and school of Law were taken as a sample via single population proportion formula of Kish and Leslie. Further primary source of data was collected via questionnaire from previous entrepreneurial intentions standardized questionnaires of different scholars. For the sake of analyzing the data Descriptive statistics was calculated using frequencies and percentages and then Binary Logistic regression analysis with 95% CI was used to assess the relative effect of independent variables on the dependent variable.The majority (77%) of sample student respondents have no Entrepreneurial intention. In multivariate analysis, attitude towards entrepreneurship was found to be a statistically significant factor of student’s entrepreneurial intension. Those who have favorable attitude towards entrepreneurship more likely to have entrepreneurial intension than those who don’t have favorable attitude towards entrepreneurship (exp(B)=6.348, 95%=CI 3.28,12.26). better self employment/entrepreneurial intension was also observed in those students who are willing to take risk than those who don’t in which those students who have high risk taking propensity almost three time entrepreneurial intension than those who have low risk taking propensity (exp(B)= 2.67, 95%=CI (1.906, 3.755)). Similarly those high proactive personality students have 1.57 times self employment intension than low proactive personality students (exp(B)= 1.57, 99%=CI ((1.293, 2.603)). Participation in entrepreneurship course also statistically significant in determining students entrepreneurial intension in DDU albeit those who participate in the course didn’t have that much significant difference in their self employment intension (exp(B)= 1.04, 95%=CI (0.732, 1.500). Further those students who have high perceived behavioral control have 4.65 times self employment intension than low perceived behavioral control students (exp(B)= 4.65, 95%=CI ((2.342, 9.231)).Attitude towards university entrepreneurial environment was also statistically significant factor for students’ entrepreneurial/self employment intension (exp(B)= 1.1, 95%=CI (0.781, 1.550)) . However, subjective norm wasn’t statically significant in determining DDU students’ entrepreneurial intensions.Generally, the over level of entrepreneurial or self employment intensions of students in Dire Dawa University is too low. Further students perceived the way entrepreneurship course delivered and entrepreneurial environment created in the university is not satisfactory/ adequate enough to urge students to pursue entrepreneurial career as an option for their future career. Keywords: entrepreneurial intension, Dire Dawa University, Determinants of entrepreneurial intension, attitude towards entrepreneurshi