The number of unemployed young university graduates in South Africa is annually on the rise.
This is due to a combination of factors which include a lack of the right skills, work experience,
type of qualification, low number of available jobs and other macro-economic factors.
Different stakeholders have proposed entrepreneurship as a possible solution to graduate
unemployment. This study explores the feasibility of entrepreneurship as a way out of
unemployment for jobless graduates. It does this by investigating the perceptions of young
graduates of the University of KwaZulu-Natal who are engaged in entrepreneurship in
Pietermaritzburg. The qualitative method of interviews is used for data collection. Two major
areas of investigation in this study are that of the challenges that graduates encounter in their
various business ventures as well as their perceptions about the effectiveness of
entrepreneurship education at university. Generally the findings of this study seem to suggest
that entrepreneurship, if developed properly, could be one of the solutions to the challenge
of graduate unemployment. However a number of factors determine successful
entrepreneurship. These include personality traits, intelligence, access to finance, good
business management skills, family background as well as the general economic environment.
The findings could also generally suggest that, in its current form, entrepreneurship education
is not effective enough in producing graduates who are successful in business. / Thesis (M.Com.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/9713 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Mtero, Kudzai. |
| Contributors | Xaba, Thokozani. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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