Factors Affecting Self- Employment of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Graduates: The Case of St. Mary's University College
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research aimed at identifoing the factors affecting self-employment of TVET graduates
considering St. Mary's University College (SMUC) as a case. The approach of the research
design was a survey method involving both qualitative and quantitative description. To this end,
questionnaire and interview methods of data collection were employed. Stratified and systematic
random sampling technique was used to select respondents for questionnaire from the target
population of four batch graduates. Interview respondents were four Entrepreneurship course
instructors from the institute under study. Thus, it is revealed that 77.7 % of the TVET graduates
of SMUC were wage employed and only 7.4% were self-employed. The rest 14.9% were
unemployed. Therefore, SMUC is successful in producing demand-driven skilled manpower to
the labor market though self-employment rate is very low. As regard to the factors affecting selfemployment,
it was found that 88.3% of the graduates and most of the instructors responded as
'lack of start-up capital ' that led the graduates to wage employment. Hence, the graduates could
not access the credit services opportunities provided by the support service system. In addition,
lack of market familiarity, lack of viable concept of business operation, and lack of experience in
managing and running a business were the other factors mentioned by the graduates whereas the
instructors believed that graduates ' attitude, lack of self-determination and lack of risk taking
behavior were factors for wage employment. Graduates also mentioned hard work (100%), need
to achieve life goal (97.3%) and self-determination (96.6%) as the first three importantfactors of
personality traits for self-employment. All the interview respondents agreed that the trainers lack
entrepreneurial training skills. Vocational guidance and counseling service was also rated
medium and below by 58.7% of the graduates that implies weak service. Based on the findings
and conclusion, solutions were recommended to the concerned stakeholders.
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Keywords
Employment of Technical, and Vocational Education