CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This chapter discusses the background to the study, statement of research problem, objectives of the study, importance of the study, research hypothesis, scope of the study, assumptions of the study, limitation of the study, and the scheme of chapters.                    

 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 

Entrepreneurship has found its way into higher education all around the globe. With the knowledge of entrepreneurship a percentage of undergraduates have developed the zeal to start up their own business after graduation hence pursuing self employment. Entrepreneurship knowledge in universities caters for student’s expectation of education as a means to satisfy their search for newness, uniqueness and practicality (Fredrick and visser 2005). 

Becoming an entrepreneur very often is the result of a personal decision making process including assessment of opportunities and their costs (being employed, being unemployed, being one’s own boss) riskreward relationship (what is at stake) and others. Some cultural beliefs, values, and behaviors in a country can influence this decision. Many inputs and circumstances contribute to entrepreneurial success but of particular importance are having the right skills and competences to identify and realize opportunities to recognize difficulties in time and to respond to failures. Starting early in getting familiar with the idea that running one’s own firm is a potential career option is important and education plays a core role in this. Hence the number of universities that mobilize their graduates for entrepreneurship careers is growing rapidly. 

Universities in particular provide unique learning environment or nascent entrepreneurs. It is the combination of research activities with teaching the various applications of knowledge and the variety of perceptions of entrepreneurial opportunities and risks that can make a difference in motivating and preparing successful entrepreneurs especially among youths because they have the necessary skills and have been trained in their institutions not just to be employed but to be employers of labour which is important as it will lead to more job creation and reduce the unemployment rate. Some universities match their entrepreneurship

education activities with ‘hands on support’, by facilitating access to finance by offering individual or teams physical support. (Clark 2000).

 Entrepreneurship education and the provision of ‘hands on support’ are still new tasks for many universities. Successful implementation requires not only closer links between researchers and educationists missions of a university but also partnership between entrepreneurs support which provides a source of financing.

Entrepreneurship knowledge in universities prepares undergraduates towards self employment it prepares students for future entrepreneurial careers and promotes the commercialization of the knowledge impacted into them through practicability. Today, entrepreneurship is seen as the vital source of self employment which many colleges and universities around the world have significantly increased their offerings of entrepreneurship courses which brings about economic growth and development. Hence entrepreneurship as a career option among undergraduates is increasingly decisional.

For most people, the popularity of entrepreneurship is largely due to the positive effects it has on many countries as a catalyst that creates wealth and the generation of job opportunities particularly self employment .One of the reasons that has made entrepreneurship popular is the fact that wages employment or secure employment is no longer a guarantee especially in the public sector for university graduates hence, the luxury thought of university graduates being the elite and intelligent group in the society who can easily acquire a job on graduation is gradually disappearing. Students are now apparently searching for a business education that can equip them with the necessary entrepreneurial knowledge and skills to succeed in running businesses or to create a job from seizing existing entrepreneurial opportunities (Brown 1999, Henry, 2003). Therefore, many universities and colleges around the world have responded to this demand by introducing entrepreneur courses to students in an effort to promote entrepreneurship as well as a professional entrepreneurship career.

There seems to be a growing interest in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education all over the world. The concept of entrepreneurship has attracted policy makers, academics, industrialist, economists and university students. This is evidenced in the series of seminars, conferences and workshops being organized at International, Regional, and National levels with emphasis on the need to sensitize individuals, societies and countries to embark on entrepreneurship. The main reason for this is that, entrepreneurship is regarded as one of the best economic development strategies which develops a countries economic growth and sustains the country’s competitiveness in facing the increasing trends of globalization [Schaper and Volery 2014, Matley and

westhead,2005]. 

Entrepreneurship and  the education  of entrepreneurs are the indispensable foundation of a country’s economy. The reason for this fact is the entrepreneurs position as the cornerstone within the economic system. Entrepreneurship education focuses on developing understanding of entrepreneurs behavior, skill and attributes in widely different context. [Akponni, 2009]. Entrepreneurship education has been described as a scholarly field that seeks to understand how opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services are discovered, created and exploited by whom and with what consequence [Venkatraman 1997]. It is concerned with the creation and recognition of opportunities by turning them into wealth creating business during a limited window of time [Sexton 1997, Smiler 1997].  

Akhuemmkhan et al. [2013] are of the view that Nigeria is a nation of paradox blessed with enormous wealth but larger proportion of the citizens live in abject poverty and face worsening unemployment. In a bid to mitigate the scourge of poverty and unemployment previous governments in Nigeria initiated diverse poverty reduction measures [PRPs] with the objective of boosting industrial production and level of employment as a means of reducing joblessness, hopelessness and crime.

 It is in respect to the above that the federal government of Nigeria in combination with these diverse strategies, the country, made it compulsory for the inclusion of entrepreneurship education in the curricula of universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. This  is expected to inculcate in students practical skills and experience needed to be self employed  and be self reliant  through the management of small-scale businesses thus, generating full employment  which will guarantee stability, security, and balanced economic development.[Idogbo and Anibor 2011].

In pursuit of the above directive, the federal government set up a presidential committee on the implementation of entrepreneurship education with a broad based membership drawing from National University

Commission, National Board for Technical Education [NABTE] , National Commission for Colleges of Education[NCCE] Education Trust Fund[ETF] as well as the hamitle consult a consulting firm on entrepreneurship education in the country with the NUC as a coordinating

agency.[Akarue2014].

The implementation of this committee resulted into implementation of introduction of entrepreneurship courses into school curriculum at various levels. This curriculum is built with objectives of creating awareness, helping a young graduate to identify and exploit business opportunities, acquire skills necessary for turning opportunities into viable ventures as well as demonstrate ability to act as an entrepreneur in all aspects of life among others. [Akudulu,, 2001].

Most stakeholders have expressed fear that although the federal government made entrepreneurship education compulsory, some universities are yet to commence it with a level of seriousness [Okojie,2009], and thus not achieving the desired result. It is against this background that this study is set out to investigate empirically the impact of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneur intention of final year students using Usmanu Danfodio

University as a case study.

 STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM

Nigeria, most populated country in Africa blessed with abundant resources both natural and physical necessary for achievement of growth that is inclusive and sustainable. An inclusive growth ensures unemployment generation, poverty reduction and improve standard of living. [Muhammad 2013]. The paradox of the matter is, despite the abundance of these resources, the rate of poverty and unemployment has been on increase.

Poverty today in Nigeria is no longer a new thing. The Nation is characterized by high population growth rate, annually; each university produces a number of graduates without adequate job opportunities to absorb the workforce. This has sky rocketed the unemployment rate in the country hence, increasing rate of poverty. This is because when an economy in which youths who are the active workforce accounted for larger percentages of the total population are unemployed, will be characterized by low productivity and thus, low per capital income. Therefore, unemployment is an increasing function of poverty.

 This clearly shows that more than half of the Nigerian youth population is unemployed and there is no sign of improvement which posses a great danger to economic development and national security.  This was what necessitated the need for government to adopt entrepreneurial education policy as a response to combating the menace of youth unemployment

The rate of unemployment among youths has attracted the attention of government, data from the national bureau of statistics shows that the unemployment rate grew steadily from 12.3% in 2005 to 19.7% in 2009 to 23.9% in 2011 and a very disturbing aspect of this values is that it relates to the growth of youth unemployment which was put as 46.5% in 2011.[NBS 2011] The national base line youth survey reported a 54% unemployment rate in 2012 while according to the national bureau of statistics urban unemployment in 2013 was 29.5% and about 22.6 million Nigerians were unemployed in 2014.

The   increasing rate of unemployment  particularly in Nigeria  has attracted the attention of international agencies and researchers in recent times it was in an attempt to stem this dangerous trend that the Nigerian universities commission [NUC] directed that entrepreneurship  education be incorporated into the curriculum of tertiary institutions with the aim of creating awareness and influencing the youths towards self-employment. 

The universities shall be fostering education and new product development through entrepreneurship as it is widely accepted that the educational system has to provide an academic environment that will serve as a catalyst that will engineer self employment [Robinson and sexton 1998].  Literatures have it that, entrepreneurship knowledge through

education will reduce the present level of unemployment among citizens and encourage them to pursue self employment. [Henry 2003]. Entrepreneurship education in recent times, has continued and featured as captivating theme in local conferences, and workshops but empirical papers on the role of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship are scarce [see Olufemi, et al, 2012; Zaidatol, 2009; Graevenity et al, 2010; Siyanbola et al,2009] The very scarce researches conducted have based their studies on other parts of Nigeria, no concrete study relating to entrepreneurship education has been conducted in Sokoto state so far. Also, most of these studies have based their method of analysis on simple descriptive statistics with the exception of Hamidi et al.[2012] that lack the capability of estimating the impact of entrepreneurship education on the entrepreneurship intention .This study therefore, attempt to fill this gap by empirically investigating the impact of entrepreneurship education on entrepreneurship intention among final year students in Sokoto state using a multiple regression analysis.

It is against this background that the study tends to address the following research problems;

i. How does entrepreneurship education affect self employment attitudes among undergraduates? ii. What are the differences in self employment intentions among undergraduates?

iii. What are the other factors apart from entrepreneurship knowledge that affects self employment options of undergraduates?

 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

 The broad objective of the study will be to find out if a relationship exists between entrepreneurship knowledge and intention of being self employed among undergraduates using Usmanu Danfodiyo University as a case study.

          More specific objectives of the study are: 

1)    To examine how entrepreneurship education affect self employment attitudes among undergraduates.

2)    To find out differences in self employment intention among undergraduates

3)    To find out if there are other factors apart from entrepreneurship 

Knowledge which affects self employment options of undergraduates. 4) To make recommendation on the impact of entrepreneurship education on self employment intention among undergraduates. 

 RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

A hypothesis is a statistical assumption or statement which may or may not be true. It is a tentative prediction stated well in advance of observation about what can be expected to occur under stated or given conditions.

In this research, the null hypothesis Ho is stated therefore, the research tends to answer the following research hypothesis stated in the

null. 

I.      Ho: entrepreneurial knowledge is not a significant determinant of self employment intention among undergraduates.

II.   Ho: there is no significant difference in self employment option among undergraduates. 

III .Ho: there are no other factors apart from entrepreneurship education that significantly affect self employment.

 IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY

The findings of the study hopefully can give some indication on how entrepreneurship knowledge can promote the interest of undergraduate students towards self employment. It will provide some initiative in formation of educational curriculums for the creation of future entrepreneurs and success of their new ventures. It also serves as a source of information for policy makers on the important role entrepreneurship education can play in achieving macroeconomic objectives of employment creation, poverty reduction, and have economic development that is sustainable and inclusive. Above all, it will serve as a reference point for policy makers and academics

with interest on entrepreneurship and self employment among

undergraduates.

 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of the study will be too wide if we want to cover all universities and all groups of academic undergraduates besides the university undergraduates are heterogeneous in their fields of study as well as time and financial constraints. Hence, the study will only cover final year students of Usmanu Danfodiyo University as the targeted respondents to examine entrepreneurship knowledge. Students from various departments within the school will be considered to investigate their knowledge of entrepreneurship and if they will want to work for others or rather prefer to be self employed.

 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

The study will have the following limitations:

(a)   In this study, a questionnaire will be used as a basis and the validation of the study instrument to determine its suitability in this study is a limitation.

(b)  The study will be limited only to final year students of Usmanu Danfodiyo University this is so as to get a feedback. 

The limitation to get a feedback from those students who had undergone entrepreneurial courses and had graduated becomes a difficult issue because it will take a lot of time and finance to locate and reach all of them.

 ASSUMPTIONS OF THE STUDY

The group of undergraduates selected as respondents are highly heterogeneous as such, the following assumptions have to be made:

(a)   That the samples selected are mainly from Usmanu Danfodiyo

University  Sokoto can represent the overall population

(b)  The factors selected as determinants for self employment can represent

the    driving   factors   of   entrepreneurial  knowledge among

undergraduates.

 SCHEME OF CHAPTERS

The study is divided into five chapters: 

Chapter one is the introduction which comprises of the background to the study, statement of research problem, objectives of the study, hypothesis of the study, importance of the study, scope of the study, limitation of the study and the scheme of chapters

 Chapter two relates to conceptual framework, definition of terms, review of relevant literatures, theoretical and empirical reviews while chapter three presents the methodology of research and it is divided into description of the study area, sample and sampling techniques and the method of data analysis.

  Chapter four: dwells on data presentation and analysis and chapter five conclude.