Cyber Times International Journal of Technology & Management

This is a very raw venture to investigate the awareness about entrepreneurship in diploma in engineering students of a local self-financed Sureshchandra Dhariwal Polytechnic situated at Jamner, a rural taluka of Jalgaon district of Maharashtra. There are more than 20 selffinanced and 1 Government polytechnic in the district. Every year the figure goes on increasing. Thanks to the apex body and the Management. Thousands of students are churned out every year. Some for higher education but majority of them hunt for jobs. Since there is high mismatch between the Diploma pass outs and the jobs available, many end with jobs where they are underpaid and exploited. This results in youth restiveness. Further majority of the students belong to lower strata of the society and economically weak, adds to the woes of the family and thereby lowering the standard of living to some extent. It is therefore felt instead of hunting for jobs students may opt for self-reliance by starting their own business and creating job opportunities for others too. It was seen that the basic desire to be self-employed was missing, and there was no inspiration to start their own business, though the Government talked about strong entrepreneurial economy for our country’s competitiveness and modernization. Hence a need was felt to study the extent of awareness about entrepreneurship in diploma students. The paper venture to examine the characteristics of an entrepreneur, entrepreneurship opportunities created by engineering and technology, modern entrepreneurship skills, problems associated with entrepreneurship and skills in diploma holders The purpose of this study was to survey final year students. The population for the survey was derived from all the five courses namely Mechanical, Civil, Electrical, Electronics and Computer Engineering students of 2014-15 batch. There was a high participation percentage (76.36%) for the survey because the instrument was delivered and administered in the colleges in person by the researcher. The survey instrument (see Appendix) was comprised of six sections and fifty two items, some of which were adopted and transformed from other standardized tools. Descriptive statistics involving mean, median, percentages and standard deviation was used to analyse the collected data. Finding showed that up to 75% of the final year students of diploma in engineering were not aware of entrepreneurship opportunities within the respective branch of study. Moreover these students were yet to develop the culture and mind set towards entrepreneurship, because of inadequate and lack of quality education and training. It is felt that a subject on entrepreneurship should be included in the syllabus of final diploma in engineering in all the branches of study. The subject should be adequately reinforced by appropriate field and practical training.