Mobility in the context of entrepreneurial potential of students under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic (Latvia, Georgia)

The aim of the study is to assess the role of the university environment of higher education institutions in Latvia in the formation and promotion of the entrepreneurial potential of students under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, paying special attention to the impact of the protracted epidemic crisis on entrepreneurial mobility. In the scientific literature, various systems of mobility are predominantly positively assessed in terms of increasing labour activity, given the increasing availability of distance employment. At the same time, distance employment also has some negative aspects, mainly reflected in the issues of social trust. In our case, the research problem was to elucidate the impact of the crisis in the life of universities, primarily the massive transition to distance learning, on the state of the entrepreneurial potential of students, especially in terms of their entrepreneurial mobility. For this purpose, exploratory research was carried out at the universities of Latvia (Daugavpils University) and Georgia (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and European University). The results of the sociological survey show that the massive transition to distance learning, the expansion the use of information and communication technology by students, is still only to a small extent continued in increasing the entrepreneurial potential, expanding entrepreneurial mobility. Moreover, the crisis situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic even more constrains students to implement their ideas in the field of personal business due to a one-sided attitude to risk as an unequivocally negative factor in the field of entrepreneurship. On the basis of the empirical data obtained, recommendations were made to the administration of universities and the leaders of public associations dealing with the promotion of entrepreneurial activity of students on the basis of more effective ways to increase their entrepreneurial mobility. The methods used by the authors include axiomatic analysis and synthesis, monographic, sociological survey, statistical analysis of quantitative data from a questionnaire survey.