Youth Empowerment and the Integration of Entrepreneurship Education into Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Nigeria

Abstract

All economies of the world possess four essential elements, viz, land; labour; capital and entrepreneurship, though they are not evenly distributed. Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success. The highest pool of potential workforce for any nation is its university students. This study was carried out in the University of Uyo, Nigeria, to investigate the appropriate strategies for integrating entrepreneurship education into TVET. 2 specific purposes and 2 research questions guided the study. A 30 item instrument tagged Entrepreneurship Training and Integration Questionnaire was used in collecting data for the study. 74 TVET lecturers constituted the population and a total of 48 were randomly selected to form the sample. It was found that industry-academia interaction, appropriate instructional methods and the development of problem solving skills, creativity, risk taking ability and team working skills were vital for developing entrepreneurship among students. It was recommended that there should be industry-academia interactions and that students should be guided to discover knowledge by themselves.