Entrepreneurial Intentions of University Students: Insights for Entrepreneurial Education in Ethiopia

The purpose of this study was to determine the entrepreneurial intention of graduating universities students in Ethiopian and to identify factors which influence students’ entrepreneurial behavior.  A survey design was employed where 665 final year university students from five universities were randomly selected as participants.  Quantitative data were collected through self-evaluation survey questionnaire and analyzed using Pearson Correlation and Logistic Regression. Additionally, data from open-ended questions were used to identify factors which influence students’ entrepreneurial behavior. The study found high entrepreneurial intention for final year university students in Ethiopia, but, low propensity to venture into business within two years after graduating. Findings from the Logistic Regression analysis found strong support for perceived feasibility, perceived desirability and course support as predictors of entrepreneurial intention, and to some extent perceived locus of control, but, gender and prior experience in a business had no effect. Barriers that deter entrepreneurial attitude include: poor government support (policies and bureaucracy), institutional issues (lack of start-up capital, business premises, and poor access to adequate and quality inputs and markets), personal issues (lack of self-confidence and motivation, fear of failure, poor entrepreneurial skills and knowledge on opportunity identification), and societal issues (society/family support and perception). From this study, it was concluded that university students recognize entrepreneurship as the way forward for curbing unemployment, but, universities need to equip students with relevant competencies that are appropriate for business start-up. The government on its part should provide positive business environment and proper infrastructure for starting a new business. Keywords: Entrepreneurial Intentions; Business; University Students; Logistic Regression; Ethiopi

Transition to University Life: Insights from High School and University Female Students in Wolaita Zone, Ethiopia

The purpose of this study was to get an insight about how high school female students perceive the transition to university life, and to understand the transition experience of university female students in the first semester. An exploratory study design was used where 166 high school female students and 88 first year university female students participated in the study. Questionnaires consisting mainly of open-ended questions were used. Data analysis employed descriptive statistics, and categorization for open-ended questions. Findings from high school female students showed that they prefer universities that are nearer home, so as: to maintain social connections, ensure security and family support. Findings showed that high school female students worry about socialization issues, finance management, language, sexual harassment, staff-student relation and academic. On transition experience, result showed that university students relied on parents’ support, friends and senior students, but rarely consulted with instructors or used university support systems.  During the first semester, students felt fear, were afraid, frightened, confused and disorientated. Also university female students rue about first semester academic outcomes, and as they journey with education they worry about failure, peer pressure, sexual harassment, pregnancy, and substance abuse. This study concluded that students at the high school need exposure on the realities of university life. The culture of seeking help should also be instilled early at the high school to give them exposure on realities of campus life especially through university community services. Keywords: Transition, Female, High school, University life, Ethiopi

Neoliberalism, Colonialism, and International Governance: Decentering the International Law of Government Legitimacy

Brad R. Roth\u27s Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law is a neoconservative realist response to liberal internationalists (or universalists). As a critique, the book unsurprisingly legitimizes the subject of its attack: liberal internationalism. That is so since in their opposition to each other, liberal internationalists and neoconservative realists fall within the same discursive formation - a Euro-American hegemony of thinking, writing, critiquing, engaging, producing, and practicing international law. This Review is an antihegemonic critique. It seeks to decenter this Euro-American opposition between liberal internationalism and neoconservative realism that has characterized the study of international law, especially in the post-Cold War period. This Review aims to demonstrate the limitations of the commitments of liberal internationalism (to a universal culture of liberal democracy and free markets), on the one hand, and of neoconservatism (to maintain the integrity of sovereign states that have effective control of their populations by restricting intervention in their internal affairs), on the other hand, as the only alternatives to understanding and producing knowledge about legitimacy in international law

The Neoliberal Turn in Regional Trade Agreements

This Article makes two primary arguments. First, that the increased resort to bilateral and regional trade agreements has taken a neoliberal turn. As such bilateral and regional trade agreements are now a primary means through which greater investor protections, commodification of social services, guaranteed rights of investor access to investment opportunities, privatization of public service goods, and generally the diminution of sovereign control are being realized. These trade agreements make the foregoing goals possible not just in developing countries, but in industrialized economies as well. I show that these agreements provide business interests with opportunities to exercise concerted pressure to influence the adoption of neoliberal economic policies in both developed economies and developing economies. Second, this Article argues that bilateralism and regionalism in trade are contemporary fads that are spreading neoliberal economic ideals in the periphery of the global trading system. In other words, emulation by small developing countries of neoliberal economic policies in developed countries is a significant driver of economic reform. Developing countries adopt neoliberalism not simply because it is imposed, as many accounts suggest. Rather, neoliberalism is also voluntarily adopted for a variety of reasons: (i) because there has been a convergence in the thinking of policymakers and academic thinkers in developing and developed countries in part as a result of socialization through education or professional associations and contacts; (ii) as a result of persuasion that neoliberal reforms are important preconditions for goals such as increased economic growth or the efficiency of public sector institutions, developing country officials have adopted them; (iii) public officials in developing countries are strategically adopting neoliberal reforms since they are regarded as a signaling device that their country is ‘safe’ for investment or because bilateral and regional trade agreements come with budget support that is otherwise unavailable to these developing country officials in their home country; (iv) officials in developing countries are passive imitators who in the absence of solid evidence as to the efficacy of neoliberal ideals on their own account or in relation to alternative reform ideas are rationally bounded actors who find it impractical to assess the efficacy of neoliberal ideals or their alternatives. In short, this Article argues that the increased number of regional and bilateral trade agreements represents an important opportunity for the further diffusion of neoliberal economic ideals, an insight often missing in leading accounts that have emphasized how this trend conforms or departs from the norms of the World Trade Organization. This paper does so using a constructivist account of the circumstances under which neoliberalism arises in the turn towards regionalism and bilateralism. It shows how ideas about market governance and the institutions and experts that generate and perpetuate these ideas impose an incentive structure within which choices in favor of neoliberalism are more than less likely to be exercised

Complexity and Opportunities in Liquid Metal Surface Oxides

The ability of metal alloys to rapidly oxidize in ambient condition presents both a challenge and an opportunity. Herein, we focus on opportunities buried in the passivating oxide of liquid metal particles. Recently described sub-surface com-plexity and order present an opportunity to frustrate homogeneous nucleation hence enhanced undercooling. Plasticity of the underlying liquid metal surface offers an autonomously repairing sub-surface hence the lowest E0 component domi-nates the surface unless stoichiometrically limited. This plasticity provides an opportunity to synthesize organometallic polymers that in situ self-assemble to high aspect ratio nanomaterials. An induced surface speciation implies that under the appropriate oxidant tension, the oxide thickness and composition can be tuned, leading to temperature-dependent composition inversion and so-called chameleon metals. The uniqueness of demonstrated capabilities points to the need for more exploration in this small but rather complex part of a metal alloy

Rejoinder: Twailing International Law

Brad Roth\u27s response to my Review of his book seeks to privilege his approach to international law as the most defensible. His response does not engage one of the central claims of my Review - that present within international legal scholarship and praxis is a simultaneous and dialectical coexistence of the dominant conservative/liberal approach with alternative or Third World approaches to thinking and writing international law. Roth calls these alternative approaches critical and does not consider them insightful for purposes of dealing with issues such as anticolonialism. Roth\u27s characterization of my Review as falling within critical approaches to international law seems too quick and, in fact, fits in very nicely with neoconservative dismissals of the progressive left, and indeed, of Third World scholarship. For example, the rise of the Critical Race Theory movement in American legal academia received the sort of response that Roth gives to my Review. Roth defends his formalistic and doctrinaire approach to the study of international law, which is divorced from the social, historical, and political context within which international law operates. In short, he defends international law as an iron cage of rules and doctrines as if the law was not itself a crucial site for the production of ideology and the perpetuation of social power. Such a view of international law, or indeed any social phenomenon, simply elides the issues raised in my Review. Roth\u27s characterization of my Review as politically dysfunctional epitomizes his failure to engage the pitfalls of formalist and doctrinaire thought in that it fails to engage the truism that states advance their interests, in part, through the medium of international law. It fails to debate whether international law is constitutive and not merely a reflection of the hierarchical character of international so�iety. As such, law does not stand outside the raw interests of states, but it produces those interests as much as it is the product of them. Consequently, the characterization of my Review as politically dysfunctional is all the sadder since any fair reading suggests otherwise. If nothing else, I engage in a careful and elaborate academic review of his book. I am not surprised, though, that Third World intellectuals receive little respect from some of their Western counterparts like Roth, even when they make credible intellectual contributions. In fact, Roth claims that his book is far more effectively anti-colonial than ... [my] critique of it. What better way of denying me a voice could there be