The Effectiveness of the Entrepreneurship Education Program in Upgrading Entrepreneurial Skills among Public University Students

Entrepreneurship education programmes create high job satisfaction and enhance life status. Higher levels of entrepreneurship education achievement lead to higher earnings and reduce the level of unemployment. Of late, many universities around the world are in the process of strengthening their entrepreneurship education programmes in order to create more young entrepreneurs in the future. This kind of education programme is always being reviewed to ensure the structure of the programme will fit in with the challenges of the world outside. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectivenes s of entrepreneurship education programmes on Malaysian university students. This study used the survey technique to evaluate the effectiveness of the entrepreneurship education programme in a Malaysian public university, specifically at Universiti Utara M alaysia. The result shows that the entrepreneurship programme which is offered by Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) is very effective in enhancing the entrepreneurial skills of the students. The findings suggest a strong relationship between the business plan, risk thinking and also self-efficacy and effectiveness of the programme, while a moderate relationship is observed in need for achievement and locus control. Thus, this study has suggested that the entrepreneurial skills and activities can be spurred through entrepreneurship education and training in a public university. The research findings will be highly significant to the Ministry of Education in terms of strengthening the entrepreneurship culture among the youth. Building the interest of our young generation is a challenge the government will face. Finally, the findings of this study will guide policy makers on how to take appropriate measures regarding current trends of entrepreneurship education programmes in public universities in Malaysia. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.