An assessment of entrepreneurial self-efficacy among technical college students in Malawi

Entrepreneurship training influences entrepreneurial behaviour. However, one must demonstrate high levels of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy (ESE) to venture into an entrepreneurial lifestyle. ESE is an important measure to examine a person who can likely become an entrepreneur. This paper reports on a study to assess students’ perceived entrepreneurial self-efficacy at Nasawa Technical College in Malawi. In 2006, Malawi adopted entrepreneurship education as a core technical and vocational education curriculum subject. However, since the introduction of entrepreneurship education in the technical and vocational education sector in Malawi, no study has been conducted to assess how students perceive their efficacy, and on the other hand, not all students enrolled in technical colleges have equal access to be exposed to entrepreneurship education due to multiple curricular being offered in TVET colleges in Malawi. The study’s objective was to assess levels of entrepreneurial self-efficacy among students exposed to entrepreneurship education against those not exposed to entrepreneurship education. The study’s null hypothesis proposed no significant differences between students exposed to entrepreneurship education and students not exposed to entrepreneurship education.The study took a descriptive survey design. Data was collected using a Likert scale questionnaire, which had 31 items. The reliability test of the instrument achieved a scale of 0.98 on Cronbach alpha. The population of the study was 200 final-year students at Nasawa Technical College. One hundred nineteen final-year students participated in the study and were sampled from six courses: bricklaying, carpentry joinery, motor vehicle mechanics, motorcycle mechanics, general fitting and secretarial studies. SPSS v 20 software package was employed to analyse the data and computed non-parametric tests. According to Mann Whitney U test results, there was a statistically significant difference between students exposed to entrepreneurship education and those not exposed to entrepreneurship education. P value 0.000 < 0.05 significance level, hence rejecting the null hypothesis. The findings support the literature, which says that exposure to entrepreneurship education positively impacts entrepreneurial competencies. Therefore, the study recommends that all students enrolling in Technical colleges in Malawi should be exposed to entrepreneurship education and training regardless of entry mode.