TITLE:
Higher Technological Education Graduates’ Entrepreneurship: Results and Conclusions of a Nation-Wide Research Study
AUTHORS:
Vassilis Kostoglou
KEYWORDS:
Entrepreneurship, Higher Technological Education, Graduate, Greek Labor Market
JOURNAL NAME:
iBusiness,
Vol.3 No.4,
December
9,
2011
ABSTRACT: Higher education graduates constitute one of the most important parts of the young workforce, and their transition to the labour market is among the main concerns of governments, policy makers and higher education institutes. It has also been argued by numerous scientists that there is a noticeable recognition of the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth, and moreover increasing self-employment rates tend to bring subsequent decreases of unemployment. This paper concentrates on the investigation of technological higher education graduates’ entrepreneurship through the analysis of the results of a nation-wide research study carried out in Greece. The conducted survey was addressed through a structured questionnaire to a large random, yet stratified sample of 708 self-employed graduates of five consecutive years. Descriptive statistics was used for investigating the main variables sketching graduates’ entrepreneurship, such as their demography and education, their professional status, the characteristics of their enterprises, the satisfaction from self-employment; and multivariate analysis was applied for detecting the variables affecting significantly the turn to entrepreneurship. The main findings are highlighted and future relevant work is suggested.