EFFECTIVENESS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE SELF-EMPLOYMENT AMONG GRADUATES IN NORTH-CENTRAL, NIGERIA

Abstract

Every employer expects certain skills, attitudes, competencies, and abilities from the applicant they seek to employ. The same is true for self-employment. To be successful as a self-employed graduate, self-employment skills are required. Graduates will be unable to achieve self-employment status unless they possess these skills and competencies. As a result, it is critical to examine Entrepreneurship Education programmes to determine whether they match the self-employment demands of graduates. This study examined lecturers' and students' perceptions of the effectiveness of the Entrepreneurship Education Programme in preparing graduates for sustainable self-employment. The study has three objectives, research questions, hypotheses with a focus on the fundamental components of an Entrepreneurship Education curriculum. The study used a descriptive survey research design. The study’s population comprised business education lecturers and students from universities offering business education in the North central states of Nigeria. The study sampled 14 and 264 business education lecturers and 2024/2025 final year students, respectively. The Entrepreneurship Education Programme and Graduates’ Self-employment Questionnaire (BEPGSQ) was used to collect data for the study. BEPGSQ was duly validated by three experts with a Cronbach reliability coefficient of 0.86. The data collected for the research questions was analysed using mean and standard deviation. The hypotheses were tested using independent samples t-test at the 0.05 level of significance. The study's findings revealed, among others, that the courses offered at the degree level of Entrepreneurship Education programme meet the accounting skills for graduates' sustainable self-employment, marketing skills for graduates' sustainable self-employment, and secretarial skills for graduates' sustainable self-employment (mean = 3.21). There was no significant difference in the mean perception ratings of male and female respondents on the extent to which the Entrepreneurship Education programme meets the accounting, marketing, and secretarial skills for graduates' self-employment. The study concludes that Entrepreneurship Education programme is helpful in preparing graduates for sustainable self-employment. The graduates' unwillingness to be self-employed is not the culpability of the programme, but of the graduates themselves. Based on the findings, the study recommends that Entrepreneurship Education lecturers should encourage final-year students to be self-employed rather than competing for jobs that are scarce or non-existent.