EXTENT ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION INFLUENCES THE ENTREPRNEURIAL INTENTIONS OF BUSINESS EDUCATION UNDERGRADUATES IN UNIVERSITIES IN ANAMBRA STATE

Abstract

This study determined the extent entrepreneurship education influences the
entrepreneurial intentions of business education undergraduates in universities in
Anambra State. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses
were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The design of the study was descriptive
survey. Population of the study was 619 (226 male and 393 female) business
education undergraduates in the three universities in Anambra State offering the
programme. The stratified random sampling and simple random sampling techniques
were used to select a sample size of 243 (male and female) students. An adapted
Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ) developed by Linan and Chen (2009)
was used to collect data for the study. The questionnaire was a 5-point scale
containing 37 items in four clusters which was validated by experts in the field of
Business Education and Measurement and Evaluation. The reliability of the
instrument was determined using the Cronbach Alpha co-efficient which yielded
values of 0.97, 0.80, 0.71, and 0.75 respectively for the four clusters and overall value
of 0.80. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyze data to answer the
research questions and determine the cohesiveness or otherwise of respondents’ mean
ratings. The z-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings revealed that entrepreneurship education influenced attitude and
perceived behavioural control of business education undergraduates towards
becoming entrepreneurs to a great extent. Gender did not significantly influence the
respondents’ mean ratings in all the contents covered. It was concluded that business
education undergraduates in universities in Anambra State would benefit from
effectively delivered entrepreneurship education programme as it would improve their
entrepreneurial intention. Based on these findings, it was recommended among others
that university authorities should assist business education undergraduates that
indicate intention to become entrepreneurs while in school and after graduation
through incubator programmes.