CHALLENGES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN NIGERIA UNIVERSITIES

 Introduction

Due to the current political, economic, and social influence of the global economic meltdown, many countries of the world have resolve to focus on their domestic economy so as to foster a sustainable and virile domestic economy that will be moderately resistant from the economic and financial strangling that may try to reoccur in the future. The recent global economic meltdown has brought to the limelight, as well as the reality, that the world is a global market (Banabo & Ndiomu, 2011).

Nigeria has a history of post-colonial agrarian economy and is now heavily dependent on the oil and gas economy (Ahiauzu, 2010). Efforts are now being made to diversify the economy by investing for example in agriculture and also encouraging the manufacturing sector. However, entrepreneurship-led development strategies are now being emphasised as these have proven successful in several Less Developed Countries (LCDs).

The Nigerian economy which used to thrive on agricultural exports such as cocoa, groundnut, hides and skin, is now solely dependent on the price of oil in the international market. It is a common knowledge that any fall in the price of oil will result to a fall in the domestic Nigerian economy. It was therefore no surprise that the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the National Universities Commission (NUC), introduced Entrepreneurship Education (EE), which is aimed at equipping tertiary students with entrepreneurial skills, attitudes and competencies in order to be job creators and not just job hunters. This is to improve the economic, technological and industrial development of the nation, as well as to reduce poverty to its minimum.

Entrepreneurship is no doubt a dynamic process of vision, change, and creation. It requires an application of energy and passion towards the creation and implementation of new ideas and creative solutions. Characteristics of entrepreneurship policies include the willingness to take calculated risks in terms of time, equity, or career; ability to formulate effective venture teams; evolvement of creative skills to marshal needed resources; and fundamental skills of building solid business plan. Recognising opportunity where others see chaos, contradiction, and confusion is also an important priority for entrepreneurship driven policies (Kuratko & Hodgetts, 2004). These are expected in the long run to help create business and thus enhance economic development. Other characteristics such as seeking opportunities, taking risks beyond security, and having the tenacity to push an innate idea through to reality generally permeate entrepreneurs (Kuratko, 2005).

THE CONCEPT AND NATURE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION

Entrepreneurship is the willingness and the ability of an individual to seek out a new investment opportunity, establish an enterprise based on this and run it successfully either for profit making or social benefit. Entrepreneurship is actually concerned with the identification of gaps and business opportunities in one’s immediate environment and bringing together the necessary resources in an innovative way to fill these gaps and in the process gaining personal rewards (which may or may not be for profit motives). The three main concepts in entrepreneurship are evaluating opportunities, securing resources, and growing and sustaining the enterprise.

Entrepreneurship, according to Omolayo (2006) is the act of starting a company, arranging business deals and taking risks in order to make a profit through the education skills acquired. To him, entrepreneurship can be described as “the process of bringing together creative and innovative ideas and coupling these with management and organizational skills in order to combine people, money and resources to meet an identified need and create wealth. In the same vein, Nwangwu (2007) opined that entrepreneurship is a process of bringing together the factors of production, which include land, labour and capital so as to provide a product or service for public consumption. However, the operational definition of entrepreneurship is the willingness and ability of a person or persons to acquire educational skills to explore and exploit investment opportunities, establish and manage a successful business enterprise.

Entrepreneurship involves innovation; bringing something new to a market that does not exist before. Even if the market already exists, there is no guarantee that the new product will survive the introduction stage of the product life cycle, taking into consideration the teething competition. Some scholars are of the view that entrepreneurship is a service rendered by anyone who starts a new business (Ogundele, Sofoluwe & Kayode, 2012). According to Akanwa and Agu (2005), anyone who creates a business, establishes it and nurses it towards growth and profitability, or takes over an existing business because the founder is dead or has sold it, or who inherited it and continues to build and innovate it, or who runs a franchise, qualifies as an entrepreneur. From this definition, an individual can become an entrepreneur through: self-establishment; taking over already existing business; inherited business venture and franchisement. Any individual can become an entrepreneur through any of these means. Furthermore, any person who has the zeal and ability to discover and evaluate opportunities, generate resources and takes steps towards taking advantage of such opportunities can become an entrepreneur.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION

Education is the process of acquiring knowledge, special skills and experiences by an individual for effective conquering and adaptation to his environment. Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a variety of settings. Variations of entrepreneurial education are offered at all levels of schooling from primary or secondary schools through graduate university programs.

Another view of entrepreneurship education is the term given to someone who has innovative ideas and transforms them to profitable activities.

Entrepreneurship education is the purposeful intervention by educators in the life of the learner to survive in the world of business. Entrepreneurship education equips students with the additional knowledge, attributes and capabilities required to apply these abilities in the context of setting up a new venture or business. It has as its focus on life and action orientation primarily embodied in teaching students how to develop a business plan. It develops and stimulates entrepreneurial process, providing all tools necessary for starting up new ventures. This concept of entrepreneurship education has passed through developmental stages.

Entrepreneurship education consists of three ingredients: creativity- creating all kinds of ideas; Innovation- find value in selected ideas; and entrepreneurship- develop a business from the innovative idea.

In a similar vein, Fayolle[2011] has explained that ultimately, entrepreneurship training is designed to teach you the skills and knowledge you need to know before embarking on a new business venture. While the programme may not guarantee success, you should be able to avoid many of the pitfalls awaiting your less well trained and vigilant contemporaries.

Entrepreneurship education is a lifelong learning process, starting as early as elementary school and progressing through all levels of education, including adult education. The standards and their supporting performance indicators are a framework for teachers to use in building appropriate objective learning activities, and assessment for their target audience. Using this framework, students will have more progressive challenging educational activities; experiences that will enable them the insight needed to discover and create entrepreneurial activities, and the expertise to successfully start and manage their own businesses to take advantage of these opportunities.

Arvanites et al [2009] share the above views when they state that innovative educational methods are needed to develop the entrepreneurial spirit and talents that are necessary to function effectively in an environment of strong market forces and complex people issues. They added that for entrepreneurship education to be most useful, it must address and develop in students, the skills necessary as an entrepreneur.

Basically, entrepreneurship education is oriented towards four methods for practical results. These methods may include:

1.      Regular entrepreneurship, which is most popular and suitable for opening of a new organization or starting a new business;

2.      Corporate entrepreneurship, which is suitable for promoting innovation or introducing new products or services or markets in existing firms;

3.      Social entrepreneurship or social venturing, which involves creating charitable organizations that are expected to be self -financing in addition to doing their usual activities; and

4.      Public sector entrepreneurship, designs to improve innovation and customer service delivery.

5.      Traditional models of education fall short in their ability to link the knowledge and concepts covered in the classrooms to the skills and practice of entrepreneurship. Traditional learning methods most commonly employed in management education provide learning experiences that are inadequate in several respects

Entrepreneurship education is very crucial for entrepreneurship development because it is the engine that propels creativity and innovations into practical manifestations in form of business ventures and other investment opportunities. Without a functional education the manifestation of entrepreneurship skills in individuals may be difficult.

WHO IS AN ENTREPRENEUR?

An entrepreneur is a person that utilizes the opportunity of instability, turbulence, lack and wants to produce something new or modifies an existing one for profit motive. An entrepreneur can also be seen as a person that has some comparative advantage in the decision making process either because he or she has better information or different perception of events or opportunities.

Entrepreneur can also be defined as an innovating individual who has developed an ongoing business activity where none existed before. Meredith (1983) defined an entrepreneur as a person or persons who possesses the ability to recognize and evaluate business opportunities, assemble the necessary resources to take advantage of them and take appropriate action to ensure success. Entrepreneurs are people who constantly discover new markets and try to figure out how to supply those markets efficiently and make a profit. He is a person that searches for change, responds to change, and exploits change by converting change into business opportunity.

Objectives of Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education according to Paul (2005) is structured to achieve the following objectives:

Ø  To offer functional education for the youth that will enable them to be self-employed and self-reliant.

Ø  Provide the youth graduates with adequate training that will enable them to be creative and innovative in identifying novel business opportunities.

Ø  To serve as a catalyst for economic growth and development.

Ø  Offer tertiary institution graduates with adequate training in risk management, to make certain bearing feasible.

Ø  To reduce high rule of poverty.

Ø  Create employment generation.

Ø  Reduction in rural-urban migration.

Ø  Provide the young graduates with enough training and support that will enable them to establish a career in small and medium sized businesses.

Ø  To inculcate the spirit of perseverance in the youths and adults which will enable them to persist in any business venture they embark on.

Ø  Create smooth transition from traditional to a modern industrial economy.

CHALLENGES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES

Within the framework of the National Policy on Education (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2014), the primary goals of university education in Nigeria are to:

a.         Contribute to national development through high level relevant manpower training;

b.         Develop the intellectual proper values for the survival of the individual and society;

c.         Develop the intellectual capability of individuals to understand and appreciate their local and external environments;

d.         Acquire both physical and intellectual skills which will enable individuals to be self-reliant and useful members of the society;

e.         Promote and encourage scholarship and community service;

f.          Forge and cement national unity; and

g.         Promote national and international understanding and interaction.

Items a, b, and d of the preceding goals are specific to development of entrepreneurship skills among undergraduates. The efforts of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and Industrial Training Fund (ITF) in this regard are a formidable driving force for entrepreneurship education. University education is under extreme pressure to explicitly prove to society that it can make effective and efficient usage of their resources and that their activities bear relevance to the employment market, aspects only really achievable through modern management acting in accordance with the prevailing environment (Hintea, Ringsmith, & Mora, 2006). This is the area universities have to demonstrate entrepreneurship capabilities in their programmes so that their graduates would largely become job creators and not job seekers.

Unfortunately, several challenges currently face Nigerian universities in their bid to properly entrench entrepreneurship education as important curriculum issue across all disciplines. According to Amoor (2008), these challenges include:

·         Lack of lecturers with practical entrepreneurial training and consciousness. Although lecturers’ awareness of entrepreneurship education has grown in the last five years and attitudes towards the new curriculum has become more positive, majority of lecturers still do not know enough the aims, contents and work method of entrepreneurship education. Consequently, they may unable to effectively impart the desired knowledge and entrepreneurial skills to their students.

·         The task of drawing up course content to be included in the curriculum of entrepreneurship-related education programme in Nigerian universities will require a very long educational process (Blenker, Dreisler, Færgemann, & Kjeldsen, 2008).

·         Entrepreneurship education is capital intensive and both lecturers and students need money to practice the theory of initiating, establishing and running enterprises. This undoubtedly constitute constraints which subsequently frustrate the integration of the entrepreneurship in academic programmes in Nigerian universities.

Brown (2012) highlighted nine basic factors that hinder entrepreneurship education in our universities in Nigeria. These are:

v  Poor knowledge based economy and low spirit of competition;

v  Poor enterprising culture;

v  Lack of entrepreneurship teachers, materials and equipment;

v  Unavailability of relevant funds;

v  Non-inclusion of entrepreneurship program in the general school curricula;

v  Poor societal attitude to technical and vocational education development;

v  Inadequate facilities and equipment for teaching and learning in practical-related courses;

v  Insensitivity of government to enterprise creation and expansion strategy;

v  Poor planning and execution of processes of action.

However, one can state categorically that several of these factors are gradually being tackled by the Federal Government of Nigeria under its relevant agencies.

 RECOMMENDATIONS

For entrepreneurship education in Nigerian Universities to be an instrument for National transformation, the following recommendations are suggested:

v  Training, on a regular basis of all lecturers and instructors on entrepreneurship education: lecturers should be recruited, trained and re-trained in the area of entrepreneurship education. They should be sponsored to attend local and international conferences to acquire more knowledge so that they can effectively transfer entrepreneurial skills into the students.

v  Provisions of access to adequate resources (including capital) to graduating students to enable them start their own business.

v  The various university managements should contact some Non-Governmental Organisations or banks to give soft loans/grants to entrepreneurship educators to establish and run their own businesses. This will enable them to acquire practical experience from their own initiatives for onward transmission to the students.

As we are in technological era, students should be thoroughly taught how to troubleshoot, service, maintain computer and other related office equipment. They should also be provided with adequate information about starting a new business and about business trends in order to minimize future risks and maximize success rates. This will help them to establish consultancy firms to sell and service the computers and other office related equipment, and also run business centre.

v  Centre for entrepreneurship education should mandatorily be established in every Nigerian university and should constantly organize workshops for the students as well as invite successful businessmen and women to give talk on how to initiate, source for funds, start and run a business successfully.

v  Undergraduate students should be mandated to go for internship with a successful entrepreneur for at least a period of two months. This will also help them to practically acquire entrepreneurial skills that will enable them initiate, establish and run their businesses after graduation. The internship training may not necessarily be a full two months but 8–10 hours in a week.

v  Provision of appropriate instruction materials and local infrastructure and support services to ensure relevance to the Nigerian situation.

CONCLUSION

Entrepreneurship education is a welcome development in Nigerian universities. However, the government directive for its introduction in all the tertiary institutions in the country in a one fell swoop without adequate preparation has aggravated the old-age problems of underfunding, dysfunctionality and ant-intellectualism. The curriculum was externally influenced by both the UNESCO and ILO, and needs immediate restructuring for effective adaptation in our environment.

The necessary learning materials, including modern facilities and equipment should be provided for a stimulating and challenging learning environment so that the products of the system will be job makers rather than job seekers as is the case now. The lecturers should be specifically trained and regularly retrained for efficiency and optimum performance.

The Federal and state governments should invest massively in the universities so that the current entrepreneurship education will not end up being a replica of the current conventional dysfunctional programme.

If there is a will on the part of the government to implement entrepreneurship education in this country it is a possible, welcome and laudable development.

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