Entrepreneurship Education and Graduate Employment in Nasarawa State

Abstract

This paper was an empirical study to analyze the relationship between entrepreneurship education and graduate employment in Nasarawa State. The need for the study was as the result of rising unemployment among graduates in the state despite entrepreneurship education as part of their curriculum. The understanding of the variables was enriched with varying related literatures that provided both theoretical and empirical of the problem statement ,the dependent variable is graduate employment which was measured as business start -up and independent variable is entrepreneurship education which was also measured as curriculum content and educators’ competence .this study adopted a descriptive survey research design ,total population of 1200 and Naville (2000) method of sample size was adopted , the sample size of 120 was used for the study. Primary method was used for sourcing data and this was collected using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was self- designed using the likert scale format. The study adopted a content validity and a Cronbach alpha method of internal consistency was used for instrument reliability. Data analysis was carried out using multiple regression technique. The study found out that entrepreneurship curriculum and educator’s competency has significant influence on graduate business start-up. This study concludes that the contents of the curriculum and educator’s competence are essential to drive graduate business start-up. The study revealed that proxies of entrepreneurship education adopted in the study are vital towards enhancing the growth and development of skills and experiences of educator in the Universities who are expected to inspire the students to creates new ideas, write business plan and develop new business. Some of the educators, however, do not possess the needed skills on contemporary approaches for efficient entrepreneurship courses delivery. The study therefore recommends that curriculum contents should be more practical, while the educators should be adequately trained.