Entrepreneurship education: a panacea for curbing graduate unemployment in Nigeria

Abstract

Recently, the relationship between business ownership and unemployment has received considerable attention from policy maker; as fifty percent of university graduates unable to find jobs for three years post-graduation. Entrepreneurship education has been introduced at the higher educational level in Ghana over the last decade to apparently address the relevance of tertiary education and unemployment. The study investigates the influence of entrepreneurship education on students' career intentions and aspirations, and their attitudes towards business start-ups. Business students were surveyed before and after exposure to entrepreneurship education in order to examine the relative influence of the entrepreneurship programme. The study revealed that not only does entrepreneurship education influence the career intentions and aspirations of tertiary students but also influences their career intentions and aspirations towards self-employment. The study recommends setting up an enterprise centre to support students to encourage more students to recognise self-employment as a career option.