Asian-Pacific Aquaculture 2019

June 19 - 21, 2019

Chennai Tamil Nadu - India

ADDRESSING THE AQUA-ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS TO PROMOTE SELF-EMPLOYABILITY

Keyho, K.* and Ojha , S.N.
Fisheries Economics, Extension and Statistics Division
ICAR- Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Versova, Andheri (W), Mumbai-400061, India
Email: snojha@cife.edu.in
 

Fisheries especially small-scale fisheries and aquaculture are a globally significant source of employment and livelihoods. It makes critical contributions to development in the areas of employment, with over 41 million people worldwide, the vast majority of whom live in developing countries. According to the Labour Bureau Statistics, India today has become the nation of the most unemployed in the world. One of the best ways to provide jobs is developing the entrepreneurship. A study was done with a view to evaluate the entrepreneurship development of the students in Nagaland as it is reported that educated unemployed youth in Nagaland are around 70,422. Focusing on 200 students, this study,  after normalization of data and bringing the values to a range of 0 to 1, low values being <0.33, medium values being < 0.34-0.66 and high values being >0.66 , finds that attitude towards entrepreneurship (80.5%), awareness about entrepreneurial opportunities (82%),  entrepreneurial environment within the university (73.5%), and Nagaland's entrepreneurial environment (86%) falls within <0.34-0.66. Spearman's rank correlation between personal factors and factors namely attitude towards entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial opportunities, entrepreneurial environment within the university and the Nagaland entrepreneurial environment was carried out. It showed that age, college, participation in literary activities, educational level of father and mother had a positive correlation with the entrepreneurial environment within the university. Parents owning business had a positive relationship with attitude towards entrepreneurship, whereas, a negative correlation was found between gender and entrepreneurial environment within the university and entrepreneurial opportunities. Factor analysis was conducted to see which factors had the most impact on the perception and attitude towards entrepreneurship. Results shows that subject factors (11.301 %) contributed highest to the total variance (56.89 %). The entrepreneurial skills selected for the study were self-awareness, networking skills, environmental scanning and critical evaluation skills where majority of the respondents' displayed moderate levels of self-awareness (64.5%), networking skills (81.5%), environmental scanning (65%) and major critical evaluation skills (61.5%). Teachers' response to the situation of entrepreneurship showed us that 67 % of the respondents mentioned entrepreneurship as a career choice, examples of entrepreneurship related activities are included in classes by 67 % of the respondents and 92% of the respondents agree that having a mentor and business sector interactions will encourage more students to take up entrepreneurship.  Inorder to improve the present infrastructure to promote entrepreneurship in fisheries in the state, Rank Based Quotient was employed to assess the teachers' responses. Creating awareness and hands on training was found to be the most important factor. To improve the syllabus to facilitate entrepreneurship in fisheries, including a course on the importance of entrepreneurship and fisheries was ranked the best solution. The reasons for students not starting their own businesses after college was due to lack of finance, followed by knowledge and exposure in the field of entrepreneurship. Short courses/ trainings in campus about business setups and seed money was suggested to be the solution to these problems. Other studies also suggests that individuals who took entrepreneurship courses have a higher tendency to start their own businesses in comparison to those that didn't. Therefore, for students lacking the required entrepreneurship development perception and skills, entrepreneurship courses in their curriculum is recommended and advisable.