Perception and Attitude of Students of Tertiary Institutions towards Entrepreneurship Eduction In Nigeria

Abstract

Entrepreneurship education in Nigeria was introduced into the schools curriculum with the aim of providing knowledge directed towards developing and inculcating into the students skills, competences, understanding and attributes that will equip them to be innovative, and to identify, create, initiate, and successfully manage personal, community, business and work opportunities. This study is on the perception and attitude of students in tertiary institutions towards entrepreneurial education in Nigeria schools. Questionnaire and interview were the instrument used and accidental sampling technique was adopted to select 300 respondents from two tertiary institutions of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi and Federal Polytechnic Bauchi. Mean, rank order and t-test where the tools employed for the data analysis. It was found out that, majority of the respondents believes entrepreneurial education is a good policy and it has come to stay, they see it as a possible solution to the problem of high level unemployment, through self employment and job creation, source of revenue to government; will promote industrialization, innovation and technology. But they are of the opinion that the prospect of the programme will hardly be achieved due to poor policy implementation and other environmental factors. The t-test result show significant difference among respondents of different institution in their attitudes towards entrepreneurial education. Most student from the university are not keen and committed to entrepreneurship education because they see entrepreneurship as menial and risky, and their ambition is to seek for senior white-color job with certainty of income. While most of the polytechnic students are more committed to the programme which may be due to technical and vocational (TVE) training they undergo. Recommendation where made based on the findings of follows; there should be proper orientation and sensitization to students on the need for entrepreneurial education and practice in Nigeria, the course should not be made compulsory interested student should be made to register for it, government should be consistent and more committed towards policy implementation, Entrepreneurial support agencies should be repositioned and be more focused.