Entrepreneurship Education and Entrepreneurial Intention Among Students of Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwashi Uku, Delta State of Nigeria

Hillary O Odor ,Josephine N Martins-Emesom ,Casmir O Bakwuye

doi:10.7176/ejbm/11-20-09

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether the course, entrepreneurship education is yielding the desired result of enhancing the capabilities of Nigerian graduates by creating in them the right mindset towards creating their own businesses rather than looking for non existing jobs. This is achieved through the analysis of relationship between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial intention among students of Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwashi Uku. This study made use of survey research design and was centered on only the final year students of the department of business administration. Data were collected for the study through the administration of structured questionnaires from three hundred and fifty (350) students of which three hundred and forty (340) were retrieved. Data analysis made use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The results from the regression analysis revealed that entrepreneurship education has a positive influence on entrepreneurial intentions of students with R squared value of 0.751, p-value = 0.000 which implies that 75 percent of the variation in entrepreneurial intentions is explained by variation in entrepreneurship education of students. From the studies, it was also discovered that personality has strong influence on students’ intention to venture into businesses after their graduation from school, with an R squared value of 0.737 and a p-value of 0.000. This informed the rejection of the null hypothesis that personality has no significant influence on entrepreneurship intention of students of Delta state polytechnic to venture into their own businesses after their education. It is therefore a matter of further research to investigate the reasons why graduates find it difficult to complete the AIDA cycle of Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. Entrepreneurial education has greatly helped to create attention and stimulate both their interest and desire to venture into businesses. What is left is therefore the final push to put into practice what they have learnt. DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-20-09 Publication date :July 31 st 2019

Highlights

The rate of unemployment in Nigeria is very high and the only way to remedy the situation as well as the standard of living for Nigerians is through sustainable development, which can only be achieved through the creation of small and medium scale enterprises
The findings revealed that the three components of the theory of planned behaviour seem to play a differentiated role in the formation of the entrepreneurship intentions of business student, with subjective norms proved to be insignificant in the process of intention formation
The result indicated that the p – value was less than the value of significance, that is, p < 0.05 implying that the model is significant thereby rejecting the null hypothesis that entrepreneurship education has no significant effect on entrepreneurial intentions among students

Summary

Introduction

The rate of unemployment in Nigeria is very high and the only way to remedy the situation as well as the standard of living for Nigerians is through sustainable development, which can only be achieved through the creation of small and medium scale enterprises. The issue of entrepreneurship education in university and polytechnics, and the fostering of entrepreneurship activity is increasingly becoming a matter of great concern (Movahedi, Fathi, & Brijal, 2011). This is undoubtedly true considering the fact that globally, unemployment is rising geometrically and the only solution at this present time is the development of entrepreneurial mindset which will enable Nigerian graduates to set up their own businesses after their education instead of searching for jobs that are non-existent. According to the Bureau of Statistics, unemployment rate in Nigeria averaged 12.31 percent from 2006 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 23.10 percent in the third quarter of 2018. According to Olayinka (2010) “the greatest challenge confronting Nigerian government today remains massive unemployment which has served as a breeding ground for anti-social vices” (as cited in Ayedun & Ajayi, 2018, p. 3)

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Conclusion