Examining the Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy among Engineering College Students-A Study of Engineering Colleges in Tamilnadu

“From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day. From his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce ”-Edison

Entrepreneurship is the most important contributor of any developing or developed economy. Entrepreneurs innovates new business which in turn generates jobs for themselves and also for those whom they employ. As Peter Drucker said “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity. ”At present, the entrepreneurial intention among the Science and Technology students is believed to be significantly low. Entrepreneurship is often thought to be a likely subject by management Teachers but only 99 doctoral theses have been awarded on entrepreneurship by Indian Universities during 2000–2008, whereas over 12068 doctoral theses have been awarded on various other social sciences disciplines. The fact clearly indicates lack of interest in entrepreneurship education. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Engineering College Environment in Influencing Entrepreneurial Proclivity among science and Technology students studying at various Institutions in Tamilnadu. ESE is the major predictor of a person's belief in his or her capability to successfully become a positive entrepreneur. Self efficacy is one of the strongest determinants of how well a person will perform at almost on any endeavor. Although there is considerable interest in the student community towards entrepreneurship, we lack the kind of infrastructure and funding that the students in West enjoy. In campuses like IIT and IIM, we have the kind of eco-system where a large number of innovative ideas are generated. But only a handful of these ideas and even fewer succeed in the long run. Once out of college, most students get fascinated and carried away by the high pay and comfortable, no-risk jobs in big companies and these ideas are put on the back burner. The specific objective of this paper is to find out a way to enhance the entrepreneurial spirit, how do ESE could be cultivated, raise the level of positive entrepreneurial spirits; so that we may not continue to lose some of our most talented student entrepreneurs to the big multinational giants. The various Engineering College students, from Tamilnadu state, are taken as sample for this study. Questionnaire is used as a tool for data collection.