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Many researchers in the past have tried to correlate personal background and entrepreneurial intentions and specifically they tried to investigate whether the educational level affects intentions. Within this framework we posed the hypotheses that educational level affects intention to engage in entrepreneurial activity and especially the person’s perceived desirability, social norms, perceived feasibility and finally perceived self efficacy.
The present research confirms the effect that the educational level has on entrepreneurial intentions and on the perceived desirability of a person to establish an enterprise. It is also noted that the educational level affects a person’s degree of perceived feasibility towards entrepreneurship and finally, research supports that the educational level directly affects entrepreneurial intentions. An interesting outcome is that individuals with a higher education consider the option of establishing an enterprise as being less desirable and less feasible than people with lower educational background and have less entrepreneurial intentions.
The results of the present study do not correspond to international literature and especially with the research of Minniti, who supported that people with higher educational background are more likely to start an entrepreneurial activity compared to people with a lower educational level. The results also do not correspond with the opinion that tertiary education positively affects entrepreneurial intentions, while they have a more positive attitude towards entrepreneurship in relation to the general population. But, Reitan poses a different opinion and supports that education can affect perceptions towards perceived feasibility, although he claims that education does not affect perceived desirability. Thus the issue of the correlation between the educational level and perceived desirability is still open and it is pos-sibly connected with the research population of each field research.
Moreover, the enhancement of entrepreneurial feasibility and entrepreneurial intentions could not be achieved only by the educational procedure. A vision of entrepreneurship is needed in order to be more feasible through the exposure to good practices in entrepreneurship.
Lack of empirical data, which correlates the general educational level and entrepreneurial intentions, was obvious. It is also a fact that the educational level can explain (to a certain degree) the balance of entrepreneurial intentions and their predicted variables. Moreover, the study contributes to the appointment of the educational level as a crucial factor in the development of new enterprises, confirming the previous models and expanding their explanatory power. In conclusion the results could be used by theory and practice in order to expand it with new predicted variables and towards new frontiers and directions. Especially, if the educational system would like to promote entrepreneurship, then it could discover ways to define the teaching methods and techniques to promote the students entrepreneurial intentions, because entrepreneurship must be desirable and feasible in the same time, in order to increase the number of graduates choosing entrepreneurship as an employment option. So the curriculum designers must take into consideration all these variables that enhance these two parameters. Moreover, the educators of entrepreneurship could use the present results in order to increase their students’ desirability and feasibility, evaluating their intentions towards entrepreneurship.
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