Characteristics of Student Entrepreneurs in State Universities in Indonesia

Entrepreneurship development is one of courses in Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (Freedom to Learn) program. The harmony of entrepreneurship program and student entrepreneurs’ characteristics is one of keys to the successful program implementation. This research aims to explore the characteristics of student entrepreneurship and its compatibility to entrepreneurship program released by university and ministry. Basic questions posed in this research are what are the characteristics of student entrepreneurship today? Do they lean to the characteristics of Millennial generation or to that of Z Generation? Then, what are the entrepreneurship characteristics the students have today? The research method used was mixed method with sequential (quantitative-qualitative) approach. At quantitative stage, the author surveyed the characteristics of Millennial Social Entrepreneurial (MSE) on 3920 students in 75 state universities existing in Indonesia. At qualitative stage, the author held FGD and interview to explore the entrepreneurship characteristics the students have. The result shows the characteristics of student entrepreneurship as follows: (1) perseverance, proactive personality, (3) awareness of social issue, (4) life satisfaction, (5) self-efficacy, (6) digital literacy, (7) entrepreneur motivation, (8) critical attitude, (9) pragmatic characteristic, and (10) uncertainty orientation. The entrepreneurial characteristics are intersection between Millennial and Z generations’ values. Pragmatic characteristic and uncertainty orientation are the characteristics beyond MSE. Considering these findings, the policy of developing digital-based start-up by prioritizing technical simplification and sustainable program reinforcement in long term for students should be endeavored by universities in the attempt of optimizing MBKM entrepreneurship program