Comparing Engineering and Business Undergraduate Students’ Entrepreneurial Interests and Characteristics

Abstract

Technological innovation and entrepreneurship contribute significantly to the U.S. economy. U.S. colleges and universities contribute to this technological innovation through, for example, entrepreneurship education programs for undergraduate engineering students. In order to design these programs and related courses, however, there is a critical need to better understand engineering students' career choices, personal characteristics, and contextual factors that may be related to innovation and entrepreneurship, especially as how these compare with those among their peers in business, where the bulk of entrepreneurship education historically has been offered. There also is a need to understand similarities and differences in entrepreneurship-related characteristics by gender, given research suggesting a gender gap in entrepreneurial pathways. This study is designed to address these topics. The participants were 518 engineering and 471 business undergraduate students from 51 U.S. universities and colleges who took the Young Entrepreneurs Study (YES) survey in 2012. The results indicate that, in general, engineering students have lower entrepreneurial intent than do business students, and women have lower entrepreneurial intent than do men among both engineering and business students. Compared with their counterparts in business, engineering students also rated themselves less positively on several personal characteristics that are related to entrepreneurship, have less interaction with mentors, and have been less involved in entrepreneurship activities and extra-curricular activities. Implications for pedagogy and practice, including those in multidisciplinary classrooms, are discussed.