Abstract:
The entrepreneurial intention has received a significant amount of
attention from researchers as a tool of development for many
countries but there is a lack of evidence for entrepreneur intention
of female students in Technical and Vocational Education Training
(TVET) sector, Sri Lanka. With the introduction of technological
subjects into secondary education, there is a huge tendency for
tertiary education in the technical stream and involvement of
females in technical education also increasing. Thus, there is a need
to study the entrepreneurial intention of female students in the
TVET sector. The population was the students in seven major
disciplines named Mechanical, Construction, Beauty Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality, Events and Food Science in government
TVET sector educational institutes in Sri Lanka. Simple random
sampling method was used and the data was collected using a self administered questionnaire among two hundred students which
was the sample. Descriptive statistics were employed on data
analysis. The results indicated that personal interest and available
career opportunities in the field as the major reasons for the
selection of studying area and the majority is willing to
continuously occupy in the same. Even though the study revealed
that the respondents’ belief as the entrepreneurship is more
profitable, as per the findings, the overall entrepreneurial intention
is very low and most of the students have an idea to follow higher
education or interest to work as an employee in the same field. The
findings communicate educators and responsible personalities to
make necessary decisions to support employees and students to
increase the involvement as entrepreneurs through TVET sector
which increase the socio-economic contribution to the economy.
Keywords: entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial intention, female
students, tertiary vocational education & training
