Facilitators of tertiary students' entrepreneurial intentions: Insights for Lesotho's national entrepreneurship policy

Abstract

This study provides insightful information to guide the Lesotho government's drive to address rising youth unemployment. Through quota sampling technique, this study selected 930 students from 31 departments at National University of Lesotho. Grounded in the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the study examined the facilitators of students' entrepreneurial intentions using mean, standard deviation, mean rank, correlation, and Mann-Whitney U test. Structural equation modelling was used to determine the relationship between the three components of TPB (attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norm), and students' entrepreneurial intention. The findings show that attitudes and perceived behavioural control were positive predictors of entrepreneurial intention while subjective norm was a negative predictor. The major findings indicate that students from Business and Management Development, Business Administration, Economics, Nutrition, and Pharmacy departments had higher entrepreneurial intentions, with postgraduate students (at master level) having higher entrepreneurial decisions than undergraduate students. Policy, practice, and research implications are teased out from the findings to improve entrepreneurial education.