The Role of Entrepreneurship Education on Graduate Manpower Development in Lagos State
CHAPTER ONE
Objective of Study
The general purpose of this study is to investigate entrepreneurship education on graduate manpower development in Lagos State. Specifically, the study sought to:
- Identify the types of entrepreneurship education programmes for graduate manpower development in Lagos state.
- Determine the extent to which entrepreneurship education enhanced production potentials of graduates in Lagos state.
- Determine the extent to which entrepreneurship education enhanced skill acquisition among graduates in Lagos state.
- Determine the extent to which entrepreneurship education enhanced marketing potentials of graduates in Lagos State.
- Ascertain the factors militating against the provisions of entrepreneurial education for graduate manpower development in Lagos state.
- Examine the strategies for enhancing entrepreneurship education provision for graduate manpower development in Lagos State.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
The related literature will be reviewed under the following sub-headings:
Conceptual Framework
- Concept of Entrepreneurship Education
- Concept of Economic empowerment
- Concept of Graduates
- Types of Entrepreneurship Programmes
- Extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance skill acquisition of graduates.
- Extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance production potentials of graduates.
- Extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance marketing potentials of graduates.
- Factors militating against the provisions of entrepreneurial education for graduates.
- Strategies for enhancing entrepreneurship education provision for the graduates.
Theoretical Framework
- Human Capital theory
- Risk Taking Theory
Review of Related Empirical Studies
Summary of Literature Review
Conceptual Framework
The following concepts will be reviewed under this section of the literature review. They are; Entrepreneurship Education, Economic Empowerment and Graduates.
Concept of Entrepreneurship Education
The term entrepreneurship has been associated with several activities concerned with the establishment and operations of business enterprises (Gibson, 2011). According to Ugorji (2009), entrepreneurship has to do with encouraging and inspiring the people (especially the youths) on how to be independent both in thinking and being creative in business activities. Business being an economic activity that man engages himself in order to satisfy his needs requires planning for and managing in order to ensure effectiveness. From a micro perspective, Sexton and Bowen (2007) see entrepreneurship as the creation of business plan, cases and lectures. Likewise, from technological perspective, entrepreneurship is referred to as setting up new enterprise by individuals or corporations to exploit technological innovations. It can further be described as the commercialization of emerging techno-logical discoveries or innovations.
More so, Obele (2009) in his contribution, believe that entrepreneurship is a style of business leadership that involves identifying high-potential, technology-in-pensive, commercial opportunities, gathering resources such as talents and capitals, and managing rapid growth and significant risk using principled decision-making skills. He precisely defined the term as the process by which entrepreneurs assemble organizational resources, technical systems and the strategies used by entrepreneurial firms to pursue opportunities. Aderemi (2010) positioned entrepreneurship as being needed to make full use of the knowledge of science and technology currently available in meeting market needs, thereby making the country in question more productive and more competitive internationally. These suggest the necessary involvement of a process of industrial innovation in the states’ area of strength and endowment to generate productivity and ensure economic empowerment. Entrepreneurship is therefore, a key priority area with the potential to stimulate job and wealth creation in an innovative and independent way. According to Ekekwe (2006) entrepreneurship provides young people across the globe with valuable life skills and tools to empower them to build sustainable and prosperous future for themselves and their societies at large. In essence, Entrepreneurship is the willingness and ability of an individual to seek out investment opportunities, establish, and run an enterprise successfully.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHOD
This chapter discussed the research method that was used in carrying out the study. This encompasses: The Design of the Study, Area of the Study, Population of the Study, Sample and Sampling Techniques, Instrument for Data Collection, Validation of Instrument, Reliability of the Instrument, Procedure for Data Collection and Method of Data analysis.
Design of the Study
The researcher used descriptive survey research design in carrying out this study. Nworgu (2006) stated that descriptive survey research design is the type of research design in which a group of people or items are studied by collecting and analyzing data from a sample considered to be representative of the entire group. The design is considered appropriate for this study as it seeks to elicit data from the respondents on entrepreneurship education for graduate manpower development in Lagos State.
Area of the Study
The study was carried out in Lagos State. Geographically, Lagos, sometimes referred to as Lagos State to distinguish it from Lagos Metropolitan Area, is a state located in the southwestern geopolitical zone of Nigeria. The smallest in area of Nigeria’s 36 states, with a population of over 15 million, Lagos State is arguably the most economically important state of the country, containing Lagos, the nation’s largest urban area. It is a major financial centre and would be the fifth-largest economy in Africa if it were a country. It has the highest population density of Nigeria’s states. The actual population total is disputed between the official Nigerian Census of 2006 and a much higher figure claimed by the Lagos State Government. Lagos State annual GDP is 1 trillion naira. Lagos State is bounded on the north and east by Ogun State. In the west it shares boundaries with the Republic of Benin. Its southern borders are with the Atlantic Ocean. 22% of its 3,577 km2 are lagoons and creeks. The study of Lagos state is justified by recent increase in crimes and violence experienced in the state. Also, the skill deficit of graduates in Lagos state is considered to be a constraint to long run economic growth and a contributing factor to incidence of youth unemployment that has resulted to abject poverty in the state. Thus, need for graduate manpower development through entrepreneurship education programme.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION OF RESULTS OF THE STUDY
This chapter discusses the results of the study in line with the research questions and hypotheses that guided the study
Research Question 1: What are the types of entrepreneurship education programme for graduate manpower development?
Table 1: Mean and standard deviation rating of entrepreneurship education programme for graduate manpower development
CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter deals with the discussion of findings, conclusion, implications of the study, recommendations, limitations of the study and suggestion for further study.
Discussion of Findings
The discussion of findings for was done under the following subheadings: types of entrepreneurship education programmes for graduate manpower development, extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance production potentials of graduates, extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance skill acquisition among graduates, extent to which entrepreneurship education enhance marketing potentials of graduates, factors militating against the provisions of entrepreneurial education for graduate manpower development and the strategies for enhancing entrepreneurship education programme for graduate manpower development.
Types of Entrepreneurship Education Programme for Graduate manpower development The findings in table 1 revealed that the outcome of technological activities can improve individuals and nations economically and otherwise, technological entrepreneurship helps to achieve commercial objectives; technological entrepreneurship helps in identifying high potentials, technological entrepreneurship intensify business opportunities for graduates; technological entrepreneurship helps in creating attractive business opportunities for great value positions for graduate-youths; technological entrepreneurship help to target at existing market or create an entirely new ones for graduates; technological entrepreneurship bring new technology to market in the form of new products or new processes for producing old products for graduate manpower development; sociological entrepreneurship helps in recognizing social problem that affect business opportunities for graduate manpower development; sociological entrepreneurship uses entrepreneurship principles to organize, create and manage business ventures to bring about social change; sociological entrepreneurship helps in creating social capital for achieving environmental goals; sociological entrepreneurship help to bring solution to society’s pressing social business problems; and Sociological entrepreneurship promote the voice of the youths.
Conclusion
It has been noted that the findings of the study revealed that entrepreneurship education equip graduates with manufacturing skills; entrepreneurship education helps graduates to be able to organize human and material resources in the best proportion to obtain the maximum output and maximum profits; entrepreneurship education enables graduates to determine what goods and services to be produced; entrepreneurship education enables the graduates to determine how to produce the goods and services needed by diverse societies; entrepreneurship education enables the graduates to determine where to produce the goods and services; entrepreneurship education enables the graduates to determine the category of people for whom to produce the good and services for; training on entrepreneurship enable the graduates determine the availability of relevant factors of production; and training on entrepreneurship enables the graduates determine the relative cost of the factors of production
Moreover, the findings of this study revealed that the outcome of technological activities can improve individuals and nations economically and otherwise, technological entrepreneurship helps to achieve commercial objectives; technological entrepreneurship helps in identifying high potential, technological intensive business opportunities for graduates; technological entrepreneurship helps in creating attractive business opportunities for great value positions for graduate-youths; technological entrepreneurship help to target at existing market or create an entirely new ones for graduates; technological entrepreneurship bring new technology to market in the form of new products or new processes for producing old products for graduate manpower development; sociological entrepreneurship helps in recognizing social problem that affect business opportunities for graduate manpower development; sociological entrepreneurship uses entrepreneurship principles to organize, create and manage business ventures to bring about social change; sociological entrepreneurship helps in creating social capital for achieving environmental goals; sociological entrepreneurship help to bring solution to society’s pressing social business problems; and Sociological entrepreneurship promote the voice of the youths
Furthermore, the findings of this study revealed that the extent to which entrepreneurship education will enhance marketing potentials of graduates in Lagos State include that entrepreneurship education helps graduates to gain the attention of the target audiences; entrepreneurship education helps the graduates get acquainted with the right marketing slogans; entrepreneurship education helps graduates to have good marketing relationship with their customers; entrepreneurial education helps graduates to match products and services to the people who need them; entrepreneurship education helps graduates to be able to communicate the value of products and services to customers; training on marketing skills place to ensure that consumers get maximum benefits from financial services provided by graduates; training on marketing skills place to ensure that graduates take charge of their financial well-being; training on marketing skills place to ensure that graduates gain increased awareness and understanding of financial products and services; training on marketing place to ensure that the graduates are equipped with requisite knowledge to make informed choices and take effective actions that will enhance their financial well being; and Training on marketing help graduates to save and invest properly and avoid becoming virtues of grand
Also, it has been observed that the major factors that may hinder entrepreneurship training of Graduates lack qualified entrepreneurship mentors; there is poor societal attitude towards entrepreneurship; there is inadequate facilities and equipment for teaching/ learning of entrepreneurship; graduates did not possess poor enterprising culture; choice of location of business is not a problem to out – of school youths; many graduates did not lack management competence; many graduates lack entrepreneurial training; many graduates do not have access to long term loan; many graduates did not possess poor saving culture; many graduates lack the needed training in entrepreneurship activities; and many graduates lack motivation to embark on learning of entrepreneurship skills.
Similarly, it has been remarked that the proffered solutions associated with problems of entrepreneurship education is that government should create avenues for entrepreneurial development and sponsorship for the graduates; federal government need to Provide essential facilities for entrepreneurship ventures for the out of school youths; community development workers should Provide specific skills needed for development of human capital of the out of school youths; state government should Provide basic skills, knowledge and information for starting and successfully managing an enterprise for the graduates; curriculum planners need to develop programmes that will propagate entrepreneurship education among the graduates; and Policy makers should Promote innovation by supporting academic and research activities on entrepreneurship.
Implications of the Study
These findings have a number of implications to adult education especially to community development experts. They aim at creating business opportunities and conducive environment, which empower out of school youths to raise the standard of living and provide them opportunity of developing themselves. Community development experts have carefully planned processes that eventuate into the acquisition of entrepreneurial competencies. They have entrepreneurship education in the curricular, which will help equip the youths with skills on decision making, acquisition of new ideas, methods of raising and maintaining conversations and establishing business relationships.
Limitations of the Study
In the course of this study, several difficulties were encountered by the researcher. For instance, some of the responses to the questions were not smooth. This is due to the fact that some of the respondents are stark illiterates. They saw the researcher as a spy. Also, some of the respondents seemed to be were biased in their responses, may be because they felt that the questionnaires would not attract any incentive. Hence, it limited the extent of validity and reliability of the findings. Another limitation was that it took the researcher time and effort to organize the youths. Also, the researcher found it a bit difficult in conducting the study because of limited fund. The researcher encountered problems going to were the communities where the respondents resided. This is because some of the communities have bad roads and the researcher was done during rainy season. The researcher had to plead with some of them to fill the questionnaire, perhaps this affected their responses. In spite of all these limitations, the researcher was convinced that the objective of the work was achieved.
Recommendations
- All the types of entrepreneurship education programmes should be inculcated into school curriculums to promote human empowerment and development through entrepreneurial skill acquisition. It is a means of reducing unemployment since it is skilled oriented and employment motivated. All school programmes should be geared toward providing entrepreneurial skills.
- The private partners and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) should be help to ensure that the production capacities of the youths are enhanced through adequate funding of entrepreneurship education programme and other necessary contributions. This involvement should be seen by firms as a long term investment, and as an aspect of their corporate social responsibility to the nation.
- The government should help out in the establishment of skill acquisition centres all over Nigeria to aid in the smooth transfer of skill to the graduates in Nigeria.
- Conferences and workshops should be organized and sponsored by the government to inculcate in every youth the act of marketing so that these youths will be able to sale their products after productionon.
- The government should make more provisions for providing infrastructures, personnel and the funding of Entrepreneurship education programmes in Nigeria.
- Other workable strategies for effective entrepreneurship education programme among graduates should be evolved by all the stake holders involved in planning entrepreneurship education for graduates.
Suggestion for Further Studies
From the findings, implications and limitations of this study, the researcher resolved that further research should be conducted on the following:
- Comparative study on the types of entrepreneurship education for graduate manpower development in Nigeria.
- Entrepreneurship education as a strategy for enhancing production capacity of graduates for sustainable development in Nigeria
- Entrepreneurship education programme as a strategy for enhancing skill acquisition potentials of graduates in Nigeria.
- Entrepreneurship education programme as a tool for enhancing marketing capacity of graduates in Nigeria.
- Factors militating against effective entrepreneurship education programme for graduates in Nigeria.
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