By: Rosni Bakar1 , Md Aminul Islam1 & Jocelyne Lee1 1 School of Business Innovation and Technopreneurship, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia Correspondence: Rosni Bakar, School of Business Innovation and Technopreneurship, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Malaysia
Entrepreneurship and education play a role in enhancing the country’s economic state. Entrepreneurship helps the economy by providing job opportunities. The lack of job opportunities has caused unemployment rates to increase tremendously throughout the years making the development rate of a country slow down. One way for the economy to improve is by providing jobs for the unemployed. With technology improving day by day, the need for human labor decreases over time, this is where entrepreneurship comes in. The entrepreneur taking on the challenge of unemployment and provides an occupation for him and for others by being innovative is the act of entrepreneurship.
Education is used to inspire entrepreneurship among young graduates in order for them to be able to produce job opportunities for themselves and their peers. Education is also seen as a method to eradicate poverty. Hand in hand, entrepreneurship and education plays a vital role and has been an interest of researchers. Entrepreneurship education is used to educate people with the skills and knowledge needed to be able to seize the opportunity presented. This paper discusses entrepreneurship and economic growth followed by entrepreneurship education along with the efforts and obstacles faced by Europe, China, Malaysia and Nigeria in enhancing entrepreneurship education. The paper intends to provide an understanding on entrepreneurship and its role in economic growth and entrepreneurship education.
Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, economic growth
- Introduction In an attempt to develop a nation, the necessity for education is not to be undervalued. The progress of the education sector is vital to the development of the economic state of a country (Nkang, 2013). Education is the principal influence when concerning the growth and development of the country’s economy (Adamu, 2008). In the current economy, education is not just to accomplish its most basic intention of producing and transferring new knowledge but also to improve the economy state of the country. Education is an opportunity that allows individuals to be inspired and given a chance to escape poverty by being provided with the necessary skills and knowledge needed (Aliu, 2007). Education is established as a method to eliminate poverty and entrepreneurship is seen as a substance to develop the economy.
- In today’s knowledge-based economy requires education institutions to provide knowledge and also to instill entrepreneurial intentions among university students and young graduates. With the emergence of the SME economy, there will be a necessity to provide students with the ability to identify opportunities and the knowledge and skills required to manage the opportunities (Hynes, 1996). It is an act of grooming the potential entrepreneurs. Noting that entrepreneurship education is vital to the country’s economy, one question that is to be pondered about is the length entrepreneurship education being able to contribute towards the economy.
- Entrepreneurship education has been the center of attention among researchers (Mason, 2011) and several countries has shown their interest in building the entrepreneurial spirit among its people through entrepreneurial activities and programs. Therefore, this study will look at the role of entrepreneurship education in promoting growth. This paper will be separated into four sections. The first section is the introduction. The second section of the paper gives a review on entrepreneurship education whereas the third discusses about entrepreneurship and the fourth part is a brief summation of the relationship between entrepreneurship education and growth.
- Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth Entrepreneurship is often associated with economic development, where by economic development suggests www.ccsenet.org/ies International Education Studies Vol. 8, No. 1; 2015 89 activities that facilitates in the improvement of the country and society’s standard of living. Fauziah, Rohaizat and Siti (2004) and Arokiasamy (2012) have concluded that entrepreneurship has a vital role in the economy and also the growth of the economy. It is suggested that entrepreneurship activity contributes to economic development either on the national and regional level, using GDP as an indicator of economic growth or development (Ahmad & Xavier, 2011).
- Entrepreneurship is a mean to beat youth unemployment. The Hufftington Post in its article mentions that many unemployed youths are venturing into business as a method of tackling the feeble job market in Europe, Middle East and North America. Forbes also suggests that getting a job for a young graduate might not be the right way. With the proper guide and investment in entrepreneurship, these young graduates will be able to create their own jobs and also create jobs for others. Along with the guidance and encouragement, the entrepreneurs will fabricate new trends that will be able to improve the community and develop economies. Activities assumed by small medium enterprises (SMEs) are often paralleled with entrepreneurship activities and the activities of these SMEs carry heavy weights on the development of the economy of Malaysia (Ramayah, Ahmad, & Ho, 2012).
- The role of entrepreneurship in the improvement of a country’s economy has been largely discussed (Carree & Thurik, 2010). Wennekers and Thurik (1999) find that entrepreneurship does play an important role in a country’s economy. Porter (1990, cited by Carree & Thurik, 2010) states that entrepreneurship is “at the heart of national advantage”. The powerful demand for entrepreneurship is prompted by globalization and the improvement of economic performance. One country that has benefited widely from its entrepreneurial activities is China. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report mentions that China is favorably categorized as a country with relatively high entrepreneurial intentions, and is also a country that is in an efficiency driven economy, similar to Malaysia.
- Using Malaysia as an example, entrepreneurship in Malaysia is important and can be seen when SME Corp in 2010 reported that 99.2% of business establishments in Malaysia are SMEs, employing 5.6 million of the workforce and contributing roughly 32% of the country’s gross domestic product. The Malaysian government is organizing instruments and policies to assist and support entrepreneurs. Support such as funding, physical infrastructure and business advisory services are employed (Ariff & Syarisa, 2003). Another method of support comes in the form of The National SME Development Council, which was first set up in august 2004 and carries the task of formulating and implementing the direction and strategies concerning the development of SMEs (Normah, 2007).
- The Malaysian Government has also launched the Entrepreneur Development Fund, the Bumiputera Entrepreneurship Project Fund, the Asia Japan Development Fund, the Credit Guaranteed Corporation Scheme and the Franchise Development Programme (Ramayah & Zainon, 2005). To what extent entrepreneurship education helps the economy at this moment cannot be measured as there is no particular way to assess the choice of career of the society and therefore the economic and societal impact of entrepreneurship education cannot be quantified (Weber, Graevenitz, & Harhoff, 2009). However, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor is able to measure the level of entrepreneurial activities in a country by using their own model, the Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate and GEM has also identified certain models that show how the entrepreneurial process affect the country’s economy. Aside from GEM, Wennekers and Thurik (2010) also mentions a framework, produced in 1999 depicting how entrepreneurial activities affect the country’s economy.
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