Relevance of Entrepreneurial Studies as Perceived by Vocational Education Undergraduate Students in Nigeria (Published)
This study investigated the perception of undergraduate vocational education students on the relevancy of entrepreneurial Studies in Ekiti state. In order to elicit information required for this study, three research questions were developed and answered while two null hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. A 17 item structured questionnaire titled vocational education students’ entrepreneurial studies perception (VESESP) was developed for data collection. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The sample for the study was 84 respondents made up of 97 male and 49 female vocational educational students in the two institutions running vocational education programs in Ekiti state. Face and content validity were carried out on the structured questionnaire by two experts in vocational and technical and education. The Cronbach alpha method was used to compute the reliability of the questionnaire to obtain a co-efficient of 0.79. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the research questions while t-test statistics and ANOVA were used to test the hypothesis. Based on the data collected and analysed, it was discovered that majority of respondent view entrepreneurship education as desirable and that entrepreneurship education prepares students very well for future entrepreneurial careers, there were also no significant differences among students running various degree programmes among other findings. However, it was also observed that there are various challenges facing entrepreneurship education as perceived by the students, this includes; students not having the opportunity to interact with high level entrepreneurs, inability of students to be able to prepare business plan after attending entrepreneurship education classes among others. Recommendations were thereafter made on ways to improve on entrepreneurship education courses in order to achieve the desired objectives of making vocational and technical education graduates to be job creator rather than job seekers.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship education, Perception, Undergraduate Students, Vocational education