Challenges of Entrepreneurship Education for Sustainable National Development: Way Forward

Abstract

The study identified challenges and ways of promoting entrepreneurship education for sustainable national development in federal universities in Southeastern Nigeria.  The design of the study is descriptive survey. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. Population of the study is 461 lecturers. The sample size is 347 lecturers who served as the respondents. The instrument used for data collection was a 18 item questionnaire on Managing Entrepreneurship Education for Sustainable National Development (MEESND).The instrument was subjected to face validation by three experts, two from Department of Educational Management and one from Measurement and Evaluation unit of Science Education all from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia state, Nigeria.   The reliability and internal consistency of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha and the reliability coefficient is 0.69.  Mean and Standard Deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using chi-square statistics. The findings revealed various challenges of entrepreneurship education in the universities to include:  poor funding, inadequate infrastructural support for practical experiences, inadequate entrepreneur lecturers, non-inclusion of entrepreneurship studies in the general school curricula among others. The findings also identified ways of promoting entrepreneurship education among others to include: adequate funding, establishment of curricula which are skill -based and counselling students to develop interest in acquiring skills. The study recommended among others that stakeholders in education industry should ensure adequate supply of fund to universities, provide infrastructural materials for practical work and also counsel students to develop interest in acquiring skills.