The study aimed to investigate the relationship between entrepreneurial skill acquisition, self-motivation, social influence and self-employment practice among Malaysian university graduates. Arguably, the technological advancement in any country could be made possible through innovative sciences, ideas and utilizing uncommon opportunities; and entrepreneurship is the best way to achieve this. Studies have shown that skill acquisition is the most critical factor in utilizing entrepreneurship opportunity for self-employment. However, researches have reported that most of entrepreneurship graduates from Malaysian universities do not go into entrepreneurship practice five years after graduation. To examine whether self-motivation and social influence could be possible reasons, the study adopted a survey method and a proportionate stratified random sampling method to collect data from 600 entrepreneurship graduates. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation method. One of the findings indicated that self-motivation had higher influence on self-employment than social influence; though both had significant positive relationships. It was also found that most Malaysian youth graduates had low risk-taking propensity. The study recommended that parents, government, universities and youth organizations should place more emphasize on ability to create value to the society, as learning outcome, rather than on grades (As). This would produce creative and analytical thinking and problem-solving skills among the students, leading to enterprise creation after graduation. © 2016, Allied Academies. All rights reserved.
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