The Decision to Become an Entrepreneur: Ideating, Trying To Become and Being Self-Employed Among Italian Undergraduates

Career development and finding a job after graduation is more difficult for humanities students (i.e. Educational Sciences, Communication Sciences, Social Sciences…) than those with a scientific or professional degree: choosing to be an entrepreneur could be a valuable opportunity. These considerations underlie our interest in understanding whether entrepreneurial preference is part of this type of student’s mindset and, and if so, how. A group of 560 Italian students from northern Italian universities who study Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, Educational, and Communication Sciences were involved. The research instrument is a questionnaire (50 multiple-choices items) that analyzes: personal data (age, sex, educational, work experience, …); entrepreneurial network of acquaintances (relatives, friends, ...); image of future job situation (employed, unemployed, entrepreneur…); ideas about male and female entrepreneurs (profile, characteristics, difficulties, support); information about bureaucracy and investments in creating enterprises; entrepreneurial aptitude; attitude toward entrepreneurship. The subjects are young (age average: 22.36; s.d. 3.42), 76% are female and 41% of the sample have entrepreneurs in their networks of acquaintances. Initial results highlight that 35% of the sample are _working students_ but only 6.2% are entrepreneurs/self-employed (2.9% of the whole sample). We found that only 3.8% have made an attempt to become an entrepreneur and that a significant number (37%) has considered the possibility. It is interesting to note that self-image in the future sees entrepreneurial choice as a possibility that increases over the years (while other types of jobs were decreasingly considered). The foremost personal characteristics that are considered important in creating an enterprise are innovation, need for empowerment, flexibility and autonomy. Economic aspects, bureaucracy, partners/co-workers, and getting credit from have trust by banks are cited as the principal difficulties in enterprise creation. The image of the profile of male entrepreneurs is characterized by leadership and perseverance; the female one shows perseverance and a strong _spirit of sacrifice_. Our sample shows there is a strong belief that more sacrifices are required by female entrepreneurs. Students had little knowledge about start-up processes (37% says _none known_ and 35%: _a little_) and 37% believe that it is necessary to have more than 20,000 euros to start an enterprise (32% have no idea). Data also reveal that they think that it is necessary to have access to experts, private services and banks most of all, and lastly to public services. Attitudes toward entrepreneurship/self-employment are characterized by the choice of the following types of adjectives: wonderful, prestigious, active, energetic, satisfying, interesting, suitable, various and flexible. An important variable that has a positive and significant effect on the others is _networking_: young people with a family or a social network with entrepreneurs have much information, a more positive image of an entrepreneurial job, and thinks, tries and is able to be self-employed more than the others. Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Models permit us to highlight the links between variables and to identify a model that integrates different elements of decision-making in the entrepreneurial project: gender, attitudes, aptitudes, networking, information, and social support.