Effective Implementation of Entrepreneurial Curriculum in Tertiary Education: A Strategy for Job Creation and Poverty Reduction in Nigeria Society

The research work is based on effective implementation of entrepreneurial curriculum in tertiary education in South East Nigeria. Three research questions and two null hypothesis guided study. A survey research designed was adopted for the study. The study was carried out in government owned colleges of education in South East Nigeria. The population of the study comprised of all the lecturers in Vocational and Technical Education in seven (7) government owned Colleges of Education in South East. Simple random sampling was used in selecting five (5) colleges of education and fourty (40) lecturers was randomly selected from each of the five (5) sample Colleges of Education. Structured questionnaire was used for data collection. The instrument was validated by experts from department of entrepreneurial education and measurement and evaluation. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha which yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.78 data. Collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation and t-test analysis. Findings revealed that areas of entrepreneurial skills in the curriculum are electrical installation, shoe making, ICT, Dress making, plumbing, electronic repairs e.t.c. Constraints militating against effective implementation of entrepreneurial curriculum includes inadequate number of trained leavers in adequate fund, lack of equipment, non-challant attitude of some lecturers, lack of students interest e.t.c. Strategies for effective implementation of entrepreneurial curriculum includes amongst others adequate supply of equipment, adequate funding, regular organization of workshops/seminars for lecturers on entrepreneurship, increasing the time for practicals. The hypotheses tested revealed that a significant difference does not exist between the mean responses of male and female lecturers on the areas of entrepreneurial skills to be included in the curriculum and constraint militating against effective implementation of entrepreneurial curriculum in tertiary education at 0.05 level of significance. The study recommends amongst others that entrepreneurship education must be given proper attention by government, entrepreneurial centres must be properly equipped.