Identifying and Prioritizing Effective Factors on Entrepreneurship Training for Iraqi Students in the Direction of Self-Employment

The current research was conducted with the aim of identifying and prioritizing the effective factors on teaching entrepreneurship to students for self-employment in Iraq. The approach governing the research was mixed, in which the inductive content analysis method was used in the qualitative part and the survey method was used in the quantitative part. The population studied in both the qualitative and quantitative part of the research included managers, experts and professors of management and entrepreneurship in Iraqi universities, which was achieved by using the purposeful and snowball sampling method and with 22 in-depth interviews and data saturation in the qualitative part. In the quantitative part of the research, using a researcher-made questionnaire from the results of the qualitative part of the research, 110 experts in a targeted way were selected and the concepts and categories extracted from the qualitative stage were evaluated and prioritized among the interviewed elites and other related elites. The results of the qualitative part indicated that the priority of the categories showed that the category the strategies of government and the Ministry of Science regarding the development of entrepreneurship (GH) in the first rank and then the category of factors related to students (ST) in the second rank and factors related to society (SO) and factors related to teachers (TE) are in the third and fourth ranks of priority. Also, factors related to teaching tools and methods (TM) and factors related to universities (CA) were ranked next. Based on the results, in order to improve entrepreneurship education among Iraqi students, those involved in macro and micro levels including the government, society, universities, and the students must prepare the background of the improvement in entrepreneurship education. According to the results, the refining strategies, updating the tools and approaches of education, and improving the attitude of students and society are suggested.