National Transformation Agenda as a Veritable Tool for Challenges Facing Entrepreneurship Education in Federal Polytechnics in Nigeria: Students’ Perspectives

Abstract

The Nigerian government in her effort to ensure job opportunities for students after graduating from the tertiary institution introduced a compulsory Entrepreneurship Education course into the curriculum of tertiary institutions. The government believed that with the acquisition of entrepreneurship skills, students can set up business enterprises rather than remain jobless for a long period after graduation. This paper focuses on the National Transformation Agenda as a veritable tool on challenges facing entrepreneurship education in Federal Polytechnics in South-West Geo-Political Zone. Three research questions were formulated and the researcher designed a questionnaire tagged “Challenges in Entrepreneurship Education Questionnaire (CEEQ) which was used to obtain data. The sample consisted of 300 students drawn from three Federal Polytechnics. Random sampling technique was used to select 100 students from each of the three Polytechnics. Data collected were analysed using simple percentage and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results revealed that entrepreneurship education delivered in Federal Polytechnics in South-West Geo-Political Zones is not challenging enough while lecture method was the prominent way of teaching. It was further revealed that strategies used in the teaching of entrepreneurship education in the polytechnics will not significantly influence students’ attitudes towards self-reliance (f cal = 2.260 < f table = 3.840 < P = .05). Also, the study revealed that to some extent National Transformation Agenda has significant influence on entrepreneurship education in the Polytechnics (f cal = 4.1172 > f table = 3.840 < P = .05). It is therefore recommended that Entrepreneurship Education should be encouraged by managing and delivering the compulsory course in such a way that it will provoke students’ inquisition, knowledge and greater performance and government should provide adequate funding for effective implementation of the Programme.