ENTREPRENEUR PROFILE IN COLLEGE STUDENTS: A GENDER DIFFERENCES AND STUDY AREA

Entrepreneurship is becoming one of the key factors for the development of emerging economies especially in Latin America. Therefore the study has gained interest of personal and contextual factors present in future entrepreneurs, and college students represent a target population when performing such studies. This research is to analyze the entrepreneurial characteristics by gender and field of study in a sample of Venezuelan university students. Involved 259 students from technical careers in the industrial area and the administrative area of long runs and students at graduate in management and engineering of two public universities in Venezuela, of which 119 were men and 140 women aged between 17 and 27 years with a mean of 20.22 and a SD of 2.110. Through a correlational study and mean differences were compared variables gender, area of study, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, emotional style and entrepreneurial intention, obtaining meaningful relationships between them. The results show further intentions to create a business in men than women, and students of engineering and industrial area compared to the administrative area. Furthermore, self-efficacy and product development opportunities students was significant in the industrial area and the highest levels of emotional styles were found in female students. The results allow us to interpret the differences in the profiles of training, where you can see that contrary to popular belief, training in business plans and management strategies are not influential in future entrepreneurs, but those who are favored are trained to innovate and create new products, which is common in the area of industrial training. Having this information will conclude some implications for the achievement of a college education increasingly oriented toward entrepreneurship.