Entrepreneurship Education and Entrepreneurial Intentions: Evidence from Nigerian Business and Engineering Students

Abstract

Unemployment, insecurity, and poverty are a few of the major obstacles preventing higher living
conditions in Nigeria. Successive Nigerian governments have failed in their attempts to solve these
issues. For these strategies to work, Nigerian higher institutions (NHIs) must sustain indigenous
entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship education (EE) in these institutions has been the cornerstone
of the recent National Education Policy. EE was primarily designed for business students.
Recently, NHIs have witnessed the institutional-wide application of EE. This study empirically
assessed the efficacy of EE on entrepreneurial intentions (EI) of business and engineering
undergraduates. A survey of 988 randomly selected Lagos State University of Science and
Technology business and engineering students was conducted using a self-administered
questionnaire. The data generated were analyzed using descriptive, correlational, and regression
statistics. The study revealed the high level of exposure of Nigerian undergraduates to EE and a
significant positive relationship of 0.355 between EE and EI. In addition, the regression model
revealed that EE accounted for a significant 12.5 percent of the total EI. Hence, the study
recommends that NHIs continue to vigorously sustain the institutional-wide adoption of EE and
modify the existing curricula to make the program more practical and entrepreneurship-oriented
to equip Nigerian undergraduates with the requisite entrepreneurial skills and make them compete
globally.