UNIVERSITY ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION, VOCATIONAL SKILL ACQUISITION PROGRAMME, PERCEIVED FAMILY SUPPORT, PROACTIVE PERSONALITY AND ENTREPRENEURIAL INTENTION OF UNDERGRADUATES OF NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The National Universities Commission (NUC) mandated that Nigerian universities and higher education institutions provided students with Entrepreneurship Education (EEd) as a subject. The University of Ibadan Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation was subsequently founded to give students access to entrepreneurial knowledge, abilities, and awareness. The Department of Adult Education launched the Vocational Skills Acquisition Programme (VOSAP) to give students practical entrepreneurial skills. Therefore, this study sought to investigate the relationship between University Entrepreneurial Education, Vocational Skill Acquisition Programme, Perceived Family Support, Proactive Personality and Intention of undergraduates in Nigerian university. The study adopted correlation design and purposive sampling technique was used to select final year students studying at Department of Adult Education. The following instruments were employed; The EEd, VOSAP, Perceived Family Support (PFS), Proactive Personality (PP) and Entrepreneurial Intention (EI). In addition to content validation and trial testing of the instruments, ten undergraduates who were not a part of the slated respondents were consulted. For University EEd, the Cronbach Alpha reliability test gave a value of 0.65, for VOSAP 0.67, and for PFS; emotional support (0.62), appreciative support (0.60), instrumental assistance (0.67), informative support (0.66), PP (0.71), and EI (0.69). The results showed that undergraduates have level of entrepreneurial intention. It also showed that university education (β = .244, P <.05), VOSAP (β = .362, P <.05), perceived family support (β= .404, P <.05), and proactive personality (β = .501, P <.05), respectively had significant correlations with entrepreneurial intention of undergraduates. Entrepreneurial Education, VOSAP, Perceived Family Support, Proactive Personality had significant joint contribution to their entrepreneurial intention (F (4; 38 =64. 940, Adj. R 2 =0.699), accounting for 69.9% of its variance. In order to maintain undergraduates’ attention, universities should offer entrepreneurial seminars, training, and real projects and universities should also work with their in-house entrepreneurship centers to help undergraduates develop an original company plan as part of their degree.