Role of Universities in imparting entrepreneurship education in Assam

Aim: The aim of this paper is to examine the opinion of the students studying in the universities of Assam in imparting entrepreneurship education. This will help students to cope up with the real world of entrepreneurship by transforming them through learning by doing. It includes exposing them to real life problems, allowing them to interact with entrepreneurs and trainings, and may also include integration of enterprise activities in education strategies. Background: Entrepreneurial universities encourage students and staff to develop skills, behaviours and a mindset that are entrepreneurial at an individual level. Hence, it is the role of the university to provide platforms upon which students and staff experience entrepreneurship by understanding the importance of entrepreneurship and develop an entrepreneurial mindset. It may include provision of exposure to both students and staff and will expose them to different challenges that encourage them to develop entrepreneurial skills. Methodology: The present study has used descriptive statistics like simple tabulation, cross tabulations, simple percentage to analyse data. Amongst the 24 universities, keeping in mind the objectives of the present study, three universities viz. Assam University, Gauhati University and Dibrugarh University are considered; because, these three universities are collegiate universities. Snow ball and purposive methods are applied in selection of student respondents. The descriptive research design has been applied and both qualitative and quantitative research methods have been used in this study. Questionnaires, consisting of both open and close ended questions, have been used to collect data from students of select universities of Assam to get information on the current entrepreneurship education. Analytical Outcomes: Majority of the respondents (60.4%) agree that entrepreneurship teaching method has provided a new and different experience or an opportunity to learn by doing. It is also seen that majority of the respondents (59.4%) agree that Entrepreneurial or business related examples are included in the classroom teaching. Majority of the respondents (51%) agreed that Students are encouraged to pursue entrepreneurship courses in the university college. 48.20% of the total respondents agree that they will always recommend others to join their institution to learn entrepreneurship. Conclusive result: This study has presented the detail information on entrepreneurship education in Assam, various academic activities of universities of Assam and respondents' opinion on course/syllabus contents on entrepreneurship as well as the role of universities in entrepreneurship education in Assam