Building a Skilled and Inclusive Society for Sustainable Development Through Entrepreneurship Education in Public Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State.

Abstract

This study investigated building a skilled and inclusive society for sustainable development through entrepreneurship education in tertiary institutions. Three research questions and three hypotheses served as guide in this study, which adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study consisted of 6,712 lecturers in the eight public tertiary institutions in Rivers State. A sample of 670 (370 male and 300 female) lecturers representing 10% of the population was drawn through stratified random sampling technique. A questionnaire titled “ Building A skilled and Inclusive Society for Sustainable Development through Entrepreneurship Education Questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument, which has 21 items was adequately validated and a reliability index of 0.88 was obtained using Cronbach Alpha Method. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze the research questions while, z-test at 0.05 level of significance was used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that entrepreneurship Education impacts in building a skilled society through the inculcation of technical skills, business skills, leadership and creativity skills. Entrepreneurship education impacts in building an inclusive society by providing opportunities for students from diverse disciplines and social backgrounds. The study revealed that the challenges of entrepreneurship education in tertiary institutions in building a skilled and inclusive society include among others: poor funding, inadequate entrepreneurship education lecturers, and poorly designed and implemented entrepreneurship education curriculum. Based on the findings, conclusion was drawn and the following recommendations among others were made: government should increase the funding of entrepreneurship education and ensure that funds released are adequately utilized; and entrepreneurial centres should be established in tertiary institutions in Rivers State to equip students with lifelong learning processes.