Education management for the generation of self-employment of graduates

Abstract

The rising trends of unemployment among the university graduates of Thailand resulting from the rapid expansion in higher education indicate the need for providing the university students with the opportunity to better prepare themselves for self-employment after graduation. The objectives of this dissertation are to investigate : (1) the future trend of self-employment generation among the university graduates, (2) the career status, entry and changes of the graduates, (3) the factors that influence career entry decision and career group classification of graduates, and (4) the guidelines to organizing education and training at undergraduate level to generate self-employment for the future graduates.

Results of the data analyses indicate that unemployment among university graduates is the second highest next to vocational graduates and the trend seems to go on increasing as confirmed by the short range projection of graduates' unemployment rate during the Sixth National Economic and Social Development Plan (1987-1991).

Research findings reveal that the unemployed graduates are more attracted to work for the public sector than to engage in self-employment and the new graduates are more unemployed than those graduated long time ago. Graduates from open universities have less employment opportunity to work for the public sector than those from close universities. The new graduates will help their family business before becoming self-employed when they grow older. The self-employed graduates have high job satisfaction, skills and experience that could be acquired through additional training.

It is also discovered that self-employment generation is significantly influenced by the desire for self-employment, additional training, entrepreneurial traits and job-related knowledge, experience and skills. This leads to an alternative approach of alleviating the unemployment problems of the university graduates by preparing them to become self-employed through education and training. In this connection, it is recommended to introduce entrepreneurship and small business management courses in the undergraduate curriculum. The entrepreneurial course contents should be well developed to enhance entrepreneurial traits, knowledge, skills and experience so that the students will be well prepared for self-employment entry soon after their graduation.