Student readiness to start their own business

Abstract

Micro firms are more important in Poland than in other European Union (EU) member states because Polish micro firms represent a larger share of the total number of Polish firms and contribute more to total turnover and gross value added than EU micro firms. Polish students exhibit substantial interest in starting their own businesses. This paper presents the results of a study examining the entrepreneurial attitudes of 458 students. The goal of the study was to identify relationships between academic majors and academic programme and the extent to which students were ready to start their own business. The analysis revealed that although the choice of academic major did not influence student readiness to start a business, there was an association between academic programme and student readiness to start their own business. Respondent gender influenced the extent to which students were prepared to start their own business due to gender differences in access to business start-up financing.