Investigation of Students’ Attitudes Towards Entrepreneurship, Career Path Abroad and Their Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Youth entrepreneurship is considered an essential tool to unleash the economic growth of countries and diminish the high rates of youth emigration in southeast Europe. This paper is based on the data collected as part of the INTERGEN project on the attitudes of young people related to entrepreneurship and the development of family businesses carried out at twelve universities in six countries (Pavlov & Zagorcheva, 2020). The main objective of the paper is to reveal findings of the entrepreneurial attitude of students and the differences between this attitude and variables such as sex, age, the field of study, and country. Also, the paper presents the desire of students to pursue a career abroad, their life satisfaction, and analyze differences between these attitudes and variables such as age, gender, the field of study, and country. Data were generated by a sample of 1382 students from 12 universities in Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romani, Russia, and Serbia. Responses from the survey were statistically analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings disclose those female students, older students, and those who pursue business studies are more inclined to become entrepreneurs compared to their peers. The results show that there is no significant difference between the desire to develop a career abroad and variables such as age, gender, and field of study. Findings prove that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the students’ entrepreneurial attitude and life satisfaction. The paper clearly shows that students from different countries expressed different levels of entrepreneurial attitudes, life satisfaction, and desire to develop a career abroad.