Influence of Entrepreneurial Education on Skills Acquisition and Attitudes of University Graduates Towards Self Reliance in Nigeria

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education has continued to be a focus of fostering entrepreneurial interest and raise the attitudes of school leavers especially university graduates to start their own businesses in Nigeria. The believed is that through entrepreneurship education, school leavers will go out and create careers as entrepreneurs. This triggered educational policy to introduce entrepreneurship education into the curricula of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.  In view of this, Nigerian Universities, Colleges of Education and Polytechnics started offering entrepreneurship education to their students as a way of creating awareness and encouraging future graduates to consider starting their own business ventures on graduation. The goal of introducing entrepreneurship education is in line with that of the National Policy on Education (FRN, 2013) which emphasized on developing intellectual capacity and values for the individual survival that will provide enabling environment to acquire both physical and intellectual skills for self-reliance and becoming useful members of the society. Based on these, the study wishes to investigate the influence of entrepreneurial education on skill acquisition and attitudes of university graduates towards self-reliance in Nigeria. The study has 7 objectives and nine null hypotheses. Survey design method was used for the study. The researchers targeted 10,900 undergraduate students serving in business enterprises in Nigeria. The instrument used for data collection is 60 item four rating scale structured questionnaire titled Entrepreneurship Education for Skills Acquisition and Self Reliance (EESASR).  Data was collected by all the eight researchers assisted by 15 research assistants. Simple logistic Regression (SLR) was employed to test the null at 0.05 (5%) level of significance. The study revealed that entrepreneurship education provides recipients with requisite skills needed for self-reliance. It was therefore concluded that through entrepreneurship education, students are likely to recognize business opportunities, pursue the opportunities, create and operate a business. It was recommended among others that government should encourage tertiary institutions in Nigeria to establish entrepreneurial training partnership with business organizations, private investors, state and local governments and other relevant stakeholders; these will help to foster the attitude to graduates to engage in entrepreneurial activities in the country.