CHALLENGES AND MEASURES TO IMPROVE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

The study examined the challenges and measures to improve the implementation of entrepreneurship education programme in public universities in Anambra State. Two research questions guided the study and two hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance. A descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all the undergraduates from the two public universities in Anambra State. A proportionate stratified sampling technique was used to draw 814 undergraduates for the study. A researcher developed an instrument titled ‘‘Challenges and Measures to Improve the Implementation of Entrepreneurship Education Programme Questionnaire (CMIIEEPQ)" that was used for data collection. The face validation of the instrument was determined by three experts who are lecturers, two from the Department of Educational Management and Policy and one from Measurement and Evaluation in the Department of Educational Foundations, all in the Faculty of Education, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. The internal consistency of the instrument's items was established using Cronbach's alpha, yielding reliability coefficients of 0.81 and 0.84 for clusters I and II, respectively, with an overall coefficient of 0.83. The researcher, together with one research assistant who is a university lecturer in the study area, collected data. The data were analyzed using means and standard deviations to answer the research questions and a t-test to test the hypotheses. The study's findings revealed, among others, that numerous challenges hinder the implementation of the entrepreneurship education programme in public universities in Anambra State.  It was also found that there is no significant difference in the mean scores of male and female students on the strategies to improve the implementation of entrepreneurship education programme in public universities in Anambra State. Based on the findings, it was recommended, among other things, that the Federal and State Governments should set aside specific funds from annual budgets for the implementation of entrepreneurship education programme in public universities.