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Entrepreneurship Education and Self-Employment in Nigeria: Evaluation of Perceived Barriers to Actualization

Following the integration of Entrepreneurship Education into the curricular of all tertiary institutions in Nigeria, much light has been shed on the influence of entrepreneurship education on the probability of graduates being self-employed after graduation. However, there is a lack of systemic investigation in the area of barriers to entrepreneurship and how they affect the intention of becoming entrepreneur. Consequently, the aim of this study is to identify perceived barriers which prevent graduates from self-employment. Using responses from 200 graduates of tertiary institutions on a 5 point Likert Scale, data is analysed with Descriptive statistics, Correlation and Component Factor Analysis having subjected the validity check on questionnaires’ responses to Cronbach Alpha test. The findings showed that difficulty involved in securing loan from financial institutions, fear of risk, inability to generate new business idea, weak economic environment and difficulty in locating customer were major obstacles to starting a business with cumulative variance of 70.15%. These effects are found to be positive on barriers to graduates’ decision to be self-employed with respective eigenvalues of 4.030, 2.674, 2.216, 1.194 and 1.108. The study therefore suggests that the policy maker should implement sound economic policies to boost the country’s economic environment, simplify the bureaucracy of assessing loan and increase the campaign to re-orientate Nigerians towards Nigerian products. The institutions of learning also need to do more in the area of mentoring to alley the fear of risk and adopt interactive and practical operational methods of teaching in delivering entrepreneurship education.