ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: A PANACEA TO UNEMPLOYMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper examines the contribution of entrepreneurship education to unemployment eradication in south west Nigeria.Descriptive survey design was used for the study. A sample of 10 universities in the south west Nigeria (5 state owned and 5 federal owned) was drawn using simple random sampling technique. Also, proportionate stratified random sampling was used to select 100 final year students from each university, which amounted to 1000 respondents. The study developed and used a questionnaire tagged “Entrepreneurship Education and Employment Opportunity Questionnaire (EEEOQ)” with cronbach-alpha reliability coefficient of α = 0.88 and complimented with structured interview. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r) was employed to analyse the data. While the null hypotheses developed for the study were tested at .05 level of significance.The findings revealed that there is significant relationship between entrepreneurship education and job creation ability of the university students in south west Nigeria; students’ acquisition of job creation skills; adequate supply of nation’s manpower needs; and employment job related skills.It is therefore recommended among others thatentrepreneurship curriculum should be enriched to incorporate more vocational and technical training, and the development of apprenticeship scheme that would give new graduates some work skills and experiences.