Abstract:
ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) has been implemented since the end of 2015 with an obligation to all its member states to easier flow of goods, services and labours. Sure, it will give positive and negative impacts if it is not well managed. Therefore, in order to face it, entrepreneurship is necessary and has been a focus to government. Through entrepreneurship education, Indonesian government has expanded entrepreneurship by developing entrepreneurship characters to students at the school level at earlier stage, including in Pondok Pesantren (Islamic Boarding School). As an education institution Pondok Pesantren should be a concern to all stakeholders.
To view entrepreneurship characters in Pondok Pesantren clearly, this research was conducted. By having respondents, which are students in Pondok Pesantren Babussalam on Jalan HR. Soebrantas 62, Pekanbaru, this research was intended to answer how entrepreneurship characters existing in Pondok Pesantren are and how their preparedness to face AEC is. To answer those questions this research used AEC as a concept and 4 entrepreneurship characters (high creativity character, independent character, achievement motive character, and, leadership character) as basic thinking and literature review. In its implementation, this research used qualitative research method and field observation also structured interview to all students at III level of High School.
After conducting the research, the results show that 92-93 % students in Pondok Pesantren Babussalam had those 4 entrepreneurship characters. High creativity character was not found in 3.84 % respondents, while 96.15 % said that they had that character. Independent character was found in 98.18 % respondents and only 1.82 % mentioned that they didn’t have the character. Achievement motive character was found in every respondent with an exception for a respondent who didn’t give any answer. Moreover, 93.6 % respondents mentioned that they had leadership character, 3.8 % mentioned they didn’t have this character and only 2.6 % gave no answer. However, this was vice versa with knowledge and readiness of students to face AEC. Only around 39.7% students knew AEC, 1.3 % didn’t give an answer; even 59 % students didn’t know AEC.
