Factors Affecting the Resilience of Agricultural Colleges Case Study: Graduate Students of Shiraz University

Background: Extensive studies show that the lack of a suitable job market for university graduates is one of the most important challenges in higher education, which causes students to lack motivation for higher education.Today, new and important tasks have been defined for universities, especially agricultural faculties.One of the important duties of professors at universities is to provide a supportive environment for students to learn and progress.Underlying this task is the development of entrepreneurial characteristics in students during the study programs, which ensures that graduates are ready to work.The development of entrepreneurship at universities requires a network of different factors and components in the form of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.In fact, universities as one of the entrepreneurial ecosystems that play an important role in the growth and development of entrepreneurial activities.On the other hand, the resilience of entrepreneurial education is very important for the role and performance of universities in line with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.In other words, identifying the indicators of the university entrepreneurship ecosystem plays a very important role in identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and improving the entrepreneurial resilience of universities.Considering the role of agricultural colleges in developing the concepts of entrepreneurship and technology needed in the field of agriculture, the entrepreneurial ecosystem and improving entrepreneurial resilience together can improve the performance of agricultural colleges.Therefore, it is highly important to study this field.Thus, the current study aims to identify factors affecting the resilience of entrepreneurship education at agricultural faculties from the perspective of graduate students at the School of Agriculture, Shiraz University.Methods: This quantitative descriptive research was accomplished using the survey technique.The statistical population of the study was all graduate students (M.Sc.and Ph.D.) studying at the School of Agriculture, Shiraz University, in the academic year 2023-2024.The sample was estimated to be 186 graduate students who were from two master's degree and Ph.D. classes, according to stratified random sampling.A questionnaire was used for data collection.The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by a panel of expert professors in the field of entrepreneurship at the School of Agriculture, Shiraz University.To confirm the reliability, a pilot study was conducted among 30 students of agricultural fields at Islamic Azad University (Shiraz Branch), followed by calculating Cronbach's alpha coefficients (between 0.77 and 0.95) for the questionnaire variables, being considered an acceptable amount.The path analysis method and AMOS software were used to analyze the data and implement the causal model.The causal model of the research obtained an optimal level in terms of model fit indices, so that the Chi-square ratio to the degree of freedom, the comparative fit index, the normative fit index, and the root mean square error index were equal to 1.25, 0.960, 0.966, and 0.024, respectively.Results: According to the findings of the causal model and based on the graduate students' attitudes, the entrepreneurship ecosystem had a direct, positive, and significant effect on systematic networking.As a result, the activity and development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem had an effect on the internal and external systematic networking of agricultural schools and expanded communication and interaction between people.Meanwhile, an interesting point was the indirect effect of the entrepreneurial ecosystem variable on external networking through the internal networking variable.