Influence of Project Activities and Students’ Associations on the Professional Orientation of Engineering Students

Yifan Wang

School of Economics and Management

Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China

wangyifan@swjtu.edu.cn

ABSTRACT:Although many researchers point out the emergence of new generations of engineers, few engineers aremoving towards entrepreneurial careers and they do it rather late in their career. Is it possible to reverse thistrend? How can we train more entrepreneurs? This paper is based on a research work about engineeringstudents’ entrepreneurial spirit building up process, which is important for the emergence of high-techinnovative business. The objective is to reveal the development of students’ professional orientation and therelationships between entrepreneurial attitudes or aspirations and investments in pedagogical projectsactivities and in students’ associations.

Key Word: entrepreneurial intention, entrepreneurial spirit, professional orientation, pedagogical project,students’ associations