Students' entrepreneurial readiness in the United Arab Emirates: An empirical inquiry of related factors

This paper explores the relationships of students' entrepreneurial readiness with gender, parents' employment status, field of study, academic performance, and students' preferred employment sector. The paper is based on a survey of 305 students in the college of business administration at the University of Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The results suggest that entrepreneurial readiness is strongly related to students' actual academic performance (i.e., GPA scores), family background (i.e., parents' employment status) and gender. However, the study did not reveal any significant relationships involving career preferences (i.e., preferred employment sector) nor field of study with the students' entrepreneurial readiness. The contribution of the present study is two-fold. First it attempts to fill the research gap by exploring the patterns of students' entrepreneurial readiness in the Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) countries such as the UAE. Second, it explores factors which are not previously addressed in the entrepreneurship literature.