THE RELEVANCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF MICRO, SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (MSMES) IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Incorporation of entrepreneurship education as a course and subject into the educational curricular of vocational studies, secondary, tertiary institutions and entrepreneurship agencies has become a globally accepted initiative to address the increasing unemployment rates. This study assessed the state of entrepreneurship education and the impact on the development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria. The study observed an insignificant correlation between the existing Nigerian educational system where entrepreneurship education is optional and restricted to only tertiary institutions and entrepreneurship development. It also observed that the withdrawal of entrepreneurship education from the nation’s tertiary educational curriculum would be of little or no effect on the efforts in curbing employment in Nigeria. The paper puts to test, the preceding assertions with the aid of Kruskal Wallis test. From the test, the paper refutes the former assertions on the reasoning that their P-values were less than 5% level of being deemed to be significant. Based on its findings, the study therefore concludes that for entrepreneurship education to be effective in addressing unemployment in Nigeria, it should be incorporated into the nation’s educational system right from secondary school.

Keywords

• educational curricular
• entrepreneurship education
• bank of industry (boi) small and medium enterprises development agency of nigeria (smedan).