Majority of college students want to start business

More than 60 percent of Chinese college students said they were interested in starting their own business, according to a survey released in Beijing on Tuesday.

The study on entrepreneurship among Chinese college students was compiled by the Center for China and Globalization, which collected responses from 2,797 students at 100 colleges across the country.

According to the survey, 24.56 percent of the respondents showed great enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and 40.58 percent said they were quite interested in going into business. A detailed look into the study showed that engineering students were the most enthusiastic, followed by students of economics, law, art, and medicine.

A total of 70.4 percent of students saw entrepreneurship as a better way to achieve self-improvement and self-worth.

Many hoped to start a business while they were still on campus - 47.48 percent - while, a third wanted to launch company after graduation.

Due to the challenges of growing population, the high cost of living, business expenses and traffic congestion in first-tier cities, almost half would like to set up business in second-tier cities such as Chengdu, Wuhan and Nanjing, which also have fast-growing economies and improving infrastructure.

Although students were positive about entrepreneurship, they were also aware of difficulties and problems.

As many as 61.37 percent felt that lack of capital was the biggest challenge. Acquiring bank loan without enough credit or assets was cited as another challenge. Only 34 percent of students saw themselves as having the basic requirements for starting a business. Also, they said there was no specific government policy to support college entrepreneurs.

The survey also revealed other perceived obstacles, including low awareness of entrepreneurship education among students, insufficient investment in such education by schools, lack of related courses, and so on.

The survey collected suggestions on how to promote college entrepreneurship. More than 97 percent of students said they would benefit from education on starting a business. Coaching by experts and entrepreneurs was the way they would prefer to learn. More than half of the students said the introduction of relevant supportive policy was their primary demand from the government.