The Effect of Entrepreneurship Education on Students’ Entrepreneurial Career Intentions: A Study of Tertiary Institutions in Bayelsa State

The subject of entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship intention has received extensive investigation by researchers in diverse fields and from different perspectives. The aim of this research is to investigate how entrepreneurship is being taught in Nigeria and the effectiveness of the teaching methods used in delivering the programmes; evaluate the impact of EE teaching approaches on students’ entrepreneurship career intentions; and ascertain as well as evaluate key performance indicators/success measurement criteria. The research design is descriptive survey, population of the study which comprises all tertiary institution in Bayelsa State amounted to 33139 and the sample size was 395. The questionnaires were distributed electronically and responses were received accordingly. Descriptive statistics was used for data analyses (mean and standard deviation), while the hypotheses testing was inferential statistics (Pearson correlation). The results of the study shown that 87% of the respondents have impressive opinion about the entrepreneurship education delivered in Nigerian tertiary institutions. A high percentage of the student respondents rated the content of entrepreneurship lectures of strongly agreed and agreed (84%). This is a positive response with an important implication knowing that entrepreneurship is more than the mere creation of business. The characteristics of seeking opportunities, taking risks beyond security, and having the tenacity to push an idea through to reality combine into a special perspective that permeates entrepreneurs. Hence, the work recommends that entrepreneurship education should be made compulsory in all faculties in our tertiary institutions, funding should be made available by government to sponsor entrepreneurship training, mind-set training, business proposal after lectures, government should collaborate with tertiary institutions in updating curriculum on entrepreneurship education regularly as the need be and train manpower for effective delivery