University Lecturers’ Perception of Entrepreneurship Education as an Empowerment Strategy for Graduate Self- Employment in South- South Nigeria

The aim of this study was to find out lecturers’ perception of the relevance of entrepreneurship education to graduate self–employment; the types of entrepreneurial skill students should acquire to empower them for job creation and the constraints to effective teaching of entrepreneurial courses in Nigerian universities. Four research questions were formulated to guide the study. A survey design was adopted and simple random sampling technique was used to select 480 lecturers from a population of 4,389 academic staff from four universities. The instrument for data collection was a 4-point Likert scale developed by the researchers and titled “Lecturers’ perception of Entrepreneurship Education for Graduate Self–employment Questionnaire (LPEEGSQ)”. The reliability coefficient of the instrument was 0.72, using test re-test reliability method. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result of the study showed that lecturers were positive in their perception of the relevance of entrepreneurship education as an empowerment strategy for graduate self-employment. Male and female lecturers did not differ significantly in their rating of the relevance of entrepreneurship education to graduate self-employment. Lecturers rated information skill as the most important skill students should acquire in their preparation for entrepreneurship, followed by financial management skill and risk taking skill. Large class size, inadequate funding and poor mindset of students towards entrepreneurship education were rated as the major constraints to effective entrepreneurship curriculum content delivery. Premised on these findings, it was recommended that government should provide adequate funds to universities to enable them establish and equip entrepreneurial development centers for practical work and adequate teaching personnel both in quality and quantity should be employed to teach entrepreneurial courses in universities.