Entrepreneurial attitudes as an element of the financial and economic culture of students

Abstract

The transition to a market economy implied the creation of opportunities for individuals to realize entrepreneurial talent. Over the past thirty years, the interest of young people in doing business has noticeably decreased. At the same time, in the conditions of the labor market compression caused by the crisis, increasing competition for available vacancies, the idea of starting own business may be attractive. The article is based on the results of a large-scale sociological study, which included a mass survey of students of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, a series of semi-structured interviews with experts and focus group interviews with students. It shows how students feel about entrepreneurship, how right they are, according to experts, in their expectations, and how the discovered ideas and attitudes can affect the development of the economy. According to the survey results, a third of students think about their own business as a way to achieve financial well-being. Young people mostly do not see their relatives and friends as their business partners, since they prefer to conduct business on a formal basis, which they see as a certain guarantee against unfair actions of partners. At the same time, the results suggest that the protection of private property and, first of all, business, is clearly insufficient for young people. This corresponds to their ideas about the disinterest of key economic actors in fair market competition, demonopolization of the economy, reduction of corruption in the public administration system, judicial and law enforcement agencies. Experts express skepticism about the possibility of the majority of young people to open and keep afloat their business, and attribute this to a shortage of material and educational resources, and most importantly — of the social capital that corresponds to the specifics of the current economic system.