The Effect of Entrepreneurial Education in Qatar Universities Research Paper

Introduction

Unemployment due to poor career preparation has been an issue for university graduates, who may not have the resources necessary for widening their opportunities. Because of this, studying the potential impact of entrepreneurship education within the context of career intentions is important for understanding how the future of students can be positively affected. In the context of Qatar, there should be many opportunities available for university graduates to shape an effective workforce that would positively contribute to the development of the country, ranging from economic to technological advancements.

Aims and Objectives

This research aims to determine whether entrepreneurial education at Qatar universities could have a positive influence on work intentions of business management students. The main objectives are concerned with investigating the impact of the entrepreneurship curriculum, entrepreneurial education, internship opportunities, and other programs provided by universities on boosting students’ intentions to become entrepreneurs.

The present study is explanatory research, as it will be concerned with establishing relationships between variables, with the help of a deduction approach that is based on the collection of data and analysis. Qualitative research with a single technique of data collection, which is known as the mono method, is expected to reveal the perspectives of interviewees regarding the available career and entrepreneurship opportunities (Sutton and Austin, 2015). Data for the analysis will be collected with the help of face-to-face semi-structured interviews. The latter is the method that does not necessarily use a formalised list of specific questions. Usually, open-ended questions are asked to allow interviewees to elaborate on their answers in a format that would be appealing and convenient to them.

Thematic Analysis

Data analysis was conducted with the help of thematic analysis. The method is associated with approaching qualitative data from the standpoint of finding commonalities, such as topics, ideas, and patterns that will come up repeatedly in interviewees’ respondents. This method is highly flexible and can be adjusted to the intentions and objectives of the study. The first step in the present data analysis is identifying codes within available data, which is associated with highlighting the parts of interview transcripts that would describe the content. The second step is concerned with generating themes, which implies looking at the codes and identifying patterns within them, as seen in the table. After the identification of codes and themes, it is possible to draw findings on the perspectives of interviewees regarding the given themes.

Theme 1: Desire to Achieve Success as a Woman

As mentioned by Ahmed et al. (2010), there are differences in the way men and women approach the subject of entrepreneurship. Importantly, women entrepreneurs find it more challenging to start their own businesses. The interviewee mentioned that“As a woman, I like to consider myself as a feminist so being a businesswoman in a mainly male-dominated business is a plus for me and would make me feel encouraged and going forward.”

The desire to have one’s own business is driven by the desire to feel accomplished and satisfied: “I was always passionate about being a businesswoman and having my own business and basically like managing a company or a department because I always felt that it would make me feel satisfied and powerful.”

As suggested by Ahmed et al. (2010), the business sphere is highly dominated by men who usually develop stereotypes against women to prevent them from engaging in serious activities and transactions. The interviewee mentioned that it was hard to hold higher management positions because of bias: “As a female, being a manager is harder and more difficult because if you are aggressive and precise and want to get things done quickly, they immediately assume you are a B***h.”

Moreover, as also supported by Ahmed et al. (2010), the success of women-entrepreneurs is lower due to slower growth and the overall lower sales. In the interview, the student indicated that “My sister actually used to sell makeup products on Instagram and she was doing well financially, but she gave up after like one year because she realised that the customers are too demanding and picky and unreliable.”

Theme 2: Difficulties Finding the Right Path in Work

Finding the right path in work and entrepreneurship is a complicated task for university students. As mentioned by Lüethje and Franke (2011), not all students who have strong entrepreneurial intentions can found their own businesses. Moreover, it is hard to foresee whether the task would be successful without even starting it. This means that many would have to work at other companies to gain experience and sometimes do the job that is not their favourite.

Dreams and plans will also fail because life is unpredictable. The interviewee mentioned, “My life after graduation was exciting because I was supposed to go to Germany to continue my studies. However, that dream failed because it turned out to be a trash of a university. It was nothing like I expected [laughs]. So I stayed in Qatar to continue my studies instead, and I was getting rejected from all the jobs I was applying for. I became very demotivated and just started to hate my life.”

Gaining confidence when working at a company with not the most favourable environment can also be challenging for graduates. Lüethje and Franke (2011, p. 13) suggested that “Environmental factors can facilitate or impede entrepreneurial activities and thus affect the perceived cost/benefit ratio of new venture creation.” Moreover, environmental factors can have a significant impact on developing entrepreneurial intentions among students. The interviewee said that “I like my job so far like I am not doing work really because I am doing rotation, going from one department section another. It’s good. People are nice, but I feel like there are a lot of trust issues going on and everyone’s older yet not mature, I guess.”

Inevitably, unfavourable environments will decrease students’ interests in work, with students doubting their decisions about getting specific jobs. For example, the respondent said, “I don’t think I will like what I will be doing because it is a lot of finance and accounting and working with excel which really is not my cup of tea and definitely not my strength Overall, within the theme of encountering difficulties when choosing a future career path, there are sub-themes of unfavourable environments and circumstances, which lead to decreased interest in the selected jobs.

Theme 3: The Impact of Entrepreneurship Education Courses

Researchers have widely supported the implementation of entrepreneurship education courses at universities to boost students’ capabilities of becoming successful business owners. According to Hasan, Khan, and Nabi (2017), many universities fail to provide the desired training that would prepare students for the future in entrepreneurship. Ahmed et al. (2010) also mentioned that entrepreneurial intentions tend to increase when there is appropriate education and training available to students.

The interviewee indicated that her courses were beneficial because of a good example set by the professor. She said, “The reason why I chose to study entrepreneurship is mainly that I absolutely loved the professor. I admired him so much because he was an entrepreneur himself. He created a system/product for Siemens and sold it for them. He created a type of shoe for Nike. He knew Steve jobs. He created programs for Carnegie Mellon. No joke his qualifications are amazing and endless. He is a genius and so smart and so sweet and kind.” Therefore, with a positive approach toward training, universities can benefit from the preparation of their students when it comes to entrepreneurship.

She interviewee also indicated that entrepreneurship training allowed her to “opened my eyes about being my own boss and how I should invest in myself and own something. Basically, it taught me to own something under my name and under my hard work and effort.” “If it weren’t for these courses, I honestly wouldn’t care about start-up businesses because I feel that they are a major loss. But also, start-ups are a win-lose kind of situation where its 50% chance of succeeding and 50% of failing.”

These responses support the findings of Ahmed et al. (2010), Lüethje and Franke (2011), and Hasan et al. (2017), all of whom pointed out that entrepreneurship courses would only enhance students understanding of entrepreneurship. Since it is imperative to boost students’ entrepreneurial intentions, universities should choose the right mentors who would engage young people in the conversation about how they can become successful in the future.

Theme 4: View of Entrepreneurship

Studying the overall view of entrepreneurship is important because it would reveal the perspectives that young people may have toward starting up a company. According to Oo, Sahaym, Juasrikul, and Lee (2018), entrepreneurship education outcomes are directly related wot social cognitive theory, which suggests that greater levels of success would occur in countries with high degrees of masculinity, less uncertainty avoidance, and greater individualism. However, the respondent had doubts regarding the success of entrepreneurship. She mentioned that “It is such an interesting career path, but it is beyond risky, especially because I don’t have work experience. I do think it’s really good but I would say it’s good after having an x amount of years and are truly experienced and comfortable with your idea and most importantly truly passionate about your idea.”

Getting a high qualification to be an entrepreneur can be challenging, as the interviewee said that “I would say it is not really a good idea because you have to have experience and be qualified enough and passionate enough because there are so many start-ups right now that it is too much for such a small country. Like there’s too many start-ups and your idea has to be truly ground-breaking for it to succeed.” As suggested by Lüethje and Franke (2011), all students will have different levels of qualification, thus having different potential for the success of entrepreneurship. Because of this, providing cohesive education across the board for all students is imperative.

The sub-theme of internship came up in the interview, and the respondent had an overall positive experience. Keat, Selvarajan, and Meyer (2011) suggested that internships can enable students to gain hands-on experiences by feeling, seeing, and physically engaging with the business world. This shows that learning experiences can come not only from educational programs but from placements and internships (Keat et al., 2011).

The interviewee said “So I did four internships […] These internships have affected my career path because it shaped what I have become and what I aspire to be. I got exposure of how different departments and different organisations work. I found what I like to do because of these internships where I prefer to be at a bank or an international company with people coming from different departments.” The positive experience of internships thus can guide future decisions about business and entrepreneurship.

Theme 5: Training at Universities

The final theme of training at universities revealed the way in which an educational facility can contribute to the broader range of opportunities after graduating. Universities play important roles in promoting business training because they can “position themselves as hubs of entrepreneurship” by contributing and nurturing the environment that combines the factors that are favourable to business success (Keat et al., 2011, p. 208).

As mentioned by the interviewee, her university “had a ton of programs offered at CMU that did programs where it was like three ideas to come up with a business idea and truly provide details and demonstrate a model and everything. We also had so many business courses that forced you to come up with a business and work on financial statements, strategy, business plan, strategic plan, business proposal, and do a presentation to a board of directors.” She also indicated that the training allowed her to shape her future career path.

When analysing the role of universities in shaping, the interviewee mentioned some changes that could have been made. She said that “that they should offer a course in direct relation to an organisation because that way the student would get hands-on experience. I say this because so many students were not able to get a lot of internships because they failed in the interview or they didn’t find a spot or there are no internships available.” Keat et al. (2011) mentioned that as a provider of entrepreneurship programmes, universities should do their base to shape environments that would facilitate the emergence of enterprise culture. Such a culture encourages the visualisation of innovating ideas and allows students to act upon them.

Reference List

Ahmed, I., Nawaz, M. M., Ahmad, Z., Shaukat, M. Z., Ahmad, U., ul-Rehman, W. and Ahmed, N. (2010) ‘Determinants of students’ entrepreneurial career intentions: evidence from business graduates’, European Journal of Social Sciences, 15(2), pp. 14-22.

Hasan, Sk. M., Khan, E. A. and Nabi, Md. N. (2017) “Entrepreneurial education at university level and entrepreneurship development’, Education & Training, 59 (7-8), pp. 888-906.

Keat, O. Y., Selvarajah, C. and Meyer, D. (2011) ‘Inclination towards entrepreneurship among university students: an empirical study of Malaysian university students’, International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(4), pp. 206-220.

Lüethje. C. and Franke, N. (2014) ‘Entrepreneurial intentions of business students: a benchmarking study’, International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 1(3), pp. 269-288.

Oo, P. P., Sahaym, A., Juasrikul, S. and Lee, S. (2018) ‘The interplay of entrepreneurship education and national cultures in entrepreneurial activity: a social cognitive perspective’, Journal of International Entrepreneurship, 16(3), pp. 398-420.

Sutton, J. and Austin, Z. (2015) ‘Qualitative research: data collection, analysis, and management’, The Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy, 68(3), pp. 226-231.

Appendix

Questions for Interview

1. What made you choose Business Management as a major?
2. Is anyone in your family self-employed? If yes, please tell me more about it.
3. Please tell me about your life after graduation. Are you self-employed? If yes, please explain more. If not, please tell me more about your current job and why you chose it. If no, follow up question: Will you start your own business in the next 5 years? Please explain more.
4. Do you think university entrepreneurship education has an impact on the entrepreneurial intentions of students? Yes/No. Please explain the reason behind your answer.
5. Could you tell me more about what you have gained from the entrepreneurship courses offered at your university? Did the course help you in your career? If yes, please explain how the course helped you in your career.
6. Did you have a better understanding of start-up business as a result of taking entrepreneurship courses?
7. To what extend would you say that university entrepreneurship education helps in business idea generation? Please elaborate.
8. Did you consider entrepreneurship as a desirable career option after having entrepreneurial education?
9. Were you expected to do internships in order to obtain your degree? If yes, what type of internships have you done and how did it affect you and your career plan?
10. Which one did you find more helpful in terms of developing your entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities, entrepreneurship courses, or internship program? Please tell me why.
11. Was there any training offered to assist students in starting, running and growing a business? Yes/No. Please explain what.
12. Did your university provide you with different opportunities such as business competitions, workshops and events led by keynote speakers? Yes/No. Please explain what you felt about these opportunities.
13. If you had a chance to make a change to your university’s entrepreneurship program in order to make it more effective, what would you do? Please explain more.

Interview Transcripts

Study Name: Entrepreneurship Education & Entrepreneurial Intentions

*Date of Interview: Thursday, March 5, 2020 *Interview length : 20 minutes

*Information about interviewee:

Gender: Female. Age: 22

What made you choose Business Management as a major?

I was always passionate about being a businesswoman and having my own business and basically like managing a company or a department because I always felt that it would make me feel satisfied and powerful. As a woman, I like to consider myself as a feminist, so being a businesswoman in a mainly male-dominated business is a plus for me and would make me feel encouraged and going forward.

Is anyone in your family self-employed? If yes, please tell me more about it.

No. Not really. All my family members work for some organization. They do talk about owning their own business and coming up with creative ideas but unfortunately it’s all talk and imagination because when it comes to applying they back out and start to develop fear. So yeah. There are ideas but it doesn’t go all the way. My sister actually used to sell makeup products on Instagram and she was doing well financially but she gave up after like one year because she realized that the customers are too demanding and picky and unreliable. So as said, there are ideas but they never go for long term.

Please tell me about your life after graduation. Are you self-employed? If yes, please explain more. If not, please tell me more about your current job and why you chose it.

If no, follow up question: Will you start your own business in the next 5 years? Please explain more.

Oh that is a good question. My life after graduation was exciting because I was supposed to go to Germany to continue my studies. However, that dream failed because it turned out to be a trash of a university. It was nothing like I expected [laughs]. So I stayed in Qatar to continue my studies instead and I was getting rejected from all the jobs I was applying for. I became very demotivated and just started to hate my life.Then I got a job offer from Masraf Al-Rayan Bank so I was happy because I was always interested in this bank. So now I work as a portfolio analyst in credit risk/risk management.I like my job so far like I am not doing work really because I am doing rotation, going from one department section another. It’s good. People are nice but I feel like there are a lot of trust issues going on and everyone’s older yet not mature I guess. I chose to work here because technically it was the only job I was really offered a position at and accepted me. I don’t think I will like what I will be doing because it is a lot of finance and accounting and working with excel which really is not my cup of tea and definitely not my strength. I barely passed in university when I took courses related to that. So I have a lot of mixed feelings.So after 5 years, I would like to graduate from my PhD program and proudly say I have a PhD. I would like to be a manager at the bank at that time because I want to feel accomplished.Well basically I would mainly want to get my PhD in five years time because lets get real.As a female, being a manager is harder and more difficult because if you are aggressive and precise and want to get things done quickly, they immediately assume you are a B***h [Laughs]. So I know it would take me longer but I aspire to accomplish either or both of these goals. With owning my own business I would say maybe after 10 years because I feel that at that time I would have more experience and knowledge.

Do you think university entrepreneurship education has an impact on entrepreneurial intentions of students? Yes/No. Please explain the reason behind your answer.

That is an interesting observation. Hmmm so I studied entrepreneurship in my undergraduate studies and with all honestly it opened my eyes about being my own boss and how I should invest in myself and own something. Basically, it taught me to own something under my name and under my hard work and effort. The reason why I chose to study entrepreneurship is mainly because I absolutely loved the professor. I admired him so much because he was an entrepreneur himself. He created a system/product for Siemens and sold it for them. He created a type of shoe for Nike. He knew Steve jobs. He created programs for Carnegie Mellon. No joke his qualifications are amazing and endless. He is a genius and so smart and so sweet and kind. As you can tell, I really liked him as a professor. So I took his courses because he was the one teaching us. Therefore, I enjoyed every class and he believed in everyone in becoming the person they want to be. He taught me to be kind and respectful and open-minded and accepting and open to new ideas and new potentials. So going back to your question, at first I chose to study entrepreneurship because of the professor, but after I took the classes, I started to develop that mentality of being an entrepreneur and seeing potential in every idea no matter how silly it is.

Could you tell me more about what you have gained from entrepreneurship courses offered at your university? Did the course help you in your career? If yes, Please explain how the course helped you in your career.

So far, I would say it didn’t help because I just started working like less than a month, and this is my first job ever.But I have to say that I am starting to come up with ideas and analyzing and seeing potential in every detail and I always try to come up with something that would need improvement or pointing out that there is something missing. So yeah, I think because I took these courses I have developed such way of thought.

Did you have a better understanding of start-up business as a result of taking entrepreneurship courses?

Smart question. My answer is definitely. If it weren’t for these courses, I honestly wouldn’t care about start-up businesses because I feel that they are a major loss. But also startups are a win lose kind of situation where its 50% chance of succeeding and 50% of failing. So yeah I do have a better understanding of startups because of these courses and its mainly because we were taught and given cases and we had to come up with startups and ideas.And with these ideas, it was like a group project and we had to come with financial statements, proposals, models, and assumptions that we actually have a company.So yeah these courses truly helped.

To what extent would you say that university entrepreneurship education helps in business idea generation? Please elaborate.

So I think it is VERY important because so many people I have seen who graduated from universities have no core idea about startups and entrepreneurship and are just in complete disbelief. It basically aids in your future career and opens your mind to different ideas.

Did you consider entrepreneurship as a desirable career option after having entrepreneurial education?

Ah honestly, no. Cause I’m not really about that life. It is such an interesting career path but it is beyond risky, especially because I don’t have work experience. I do think it’s really good but I would say it’s good after having an x amount of years and are truly experienced and comfortable with your idea and most importantly truly passionate about your idea. So for now, I would say it is not really a good idea because you have to have experience and be qualified enough and passionate enough because there are so many startups right now that it is too much for such a small country. Like there’s too many startups and your idea has to be truly groundbreaking for it to succeed.

Were you expected to do internships in order to obtain your degree? If yes, what type of internships have you done and how did it affect you and your career plan?

So yeah I had to do either internships or volunteer work (travelling to a third world country and providing aid) to actually graduate from university. So I did four internships. I did an internship at Siemens where I worked in the strategy department. I worked on implementing digitalization strategy in Siemens Qatar and basically I gathered information from different departments and interviewed different people from different departments in order to gather information about the products and services offered. I interned at Qatar Islamic Bank where I basically did a rotation around the departments and saw how each one operates. I did an internship at Qatar Science and Technology Park where we interviewed different universities in order to create programs for university students where they can actually join and it would be a suitable time for them to join where they don’t have exams or assignments. I also interned at Vodafone where we worked on corporate social responsibility and basically we tried to hire people with disabilities and basically tried to implement some ideas where we can engage employees and offer them things that they can make use of. These internships have affected my career path because it shaped what I have become and what I aspire to be. I got exposure of how different departments and different organizations work. I found what I like to do because of these internships where I prefer to be at a bank or an international company with people coming from different departments. It also taught me that I love to work with Germans because they are straight forward and don’t mess around. It also taught me that I want to move to Germany and work there for a few months because I fell in love with the culture.

Which one did you find more helpful in terms of developing your entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities, entrepreneurship courses or internship program? Please tell why.

That is a good question. Umm I would say internship programs because it is more of a hands-on experience and you actually get to see the work and have an exposure of what’s happening. So yeah internships are the real deal and truly help in making you understand what’s happening and seeing the work that is being done. Basically you get to see the work environment and be able to analyze according to what you learned and what you were taught.

Was there any training offered at your university to assist students in starting, running and growing a business? Yes/No. Please explain what.

I would say yes there was. We had a ton of programs offered at CMU that did programs where it was like three ideas to come up with a business idea and truly provide details and demonstrate a model and everything. We also had so many business courses that forced you to come up with a business and work on financial statements, strategy, business plan, strategic plan, business proposal, and do a presentation to a board of directors. So yeah we had a lot of training programs and courses offered to shape our future career path.

Did your university provide you with different opportunities such as business competitions, workshops and events led by keynote speakers? Yes/No. Please explain what you felt about these opportunities.

As I mentioned in the previous question, yes we did. We had a lot of things going on. Almost every month we had a keynote speaker coming in and talking to us. Some courses (like the courses I took about entrepreneurship) we had keynote speakers coming and some were graduates of CMU (the university I graduated from).

If you had a chance to make a change to your university’s entrepreneurship program in order to make it more effective, what would you do? Please explain more.

That is an interesting question. Hmm I would say that they should offer a course in direct relation to an organization because that way the student would get a hands-on experience. I say this because so many students were not able to get a lot of internships because they failed in the interview or they didn’t find a spot or there are no internships available. So yeah. I would also say that they should place these students in organizations that interest them most. So yeah.

Coding

In the present research, the codes were developed on the basis of data collected from interviews with interviewees. The main objective of the coding stage within the thematic analysis is to find meaning to the responses of interviewees. As seen from the table below, each code has been coded with the help of colour in others to identify them in the interview transcript. As a result of the interview analysis, several themes were identified. They include the desire to gain success as a woman, difficulties finding the right path in work, the impact of entrepreneurship education courses, the views of entrepreneurship, and training at universities.

The themes were further broken down into codes, which align with more specific examples from interview transcripts. Within the theme of ‘desire to achieve success as a woman, there were three codes pertaining to feminism in business, the business sphere being dominated by males, as well as examples from female relatives being successful. Three codes were also identified within the theme of difficulties finding the right path in work.

The codes included trust issues at work, the dreams of education failing because of a bad university, and having to work with figures, which was not the desired job. Five codes were aligned with the theme of the impact of entrepreneurship education courses on the success of students. The codes included learning how to become one’s own boss, good professors teaching the courses, starting to come up with new business ideas, a better understanding about starting up a company, as well as courses being important for young people starting their careers.

Another theme was related to the general view of entrepreneurship, which would reveal the attitude of an interviewee to the phenomenon in general. The codes for the theme included entrepreneurship being a complicated and risky endeavour, the need for high qualifications to be a successful entrepreneur, and having to get many internships at companies to further one’s career and get exposure. The final theme identified in the analysis was training at universities, with such codes as courses available at facilities to show how students can come up with business ideas, universities inviting keynote speakers, and there should be a course directly related to organisation work.

Coding Framework

Themes and Sub-Themes