IMPACT OF ENTREPRENUERSHIP EDUCATION ON EMPLOYMENT CREATION :A CASE STUDY OF EVELYN HONE COLLEGE.
Abstract
The study investigated the impact of entrepreneurship education on employment creation. The target population constituted business students and lecturers offering entrepreneurship programmes at Evelyn Hone College. The study used a case study design adopting a mixed research approach that included qualitative and quantitative methods.A total of 55 students and 5 lecturers were sampled in this study. Data was collected using questionnaires and scheduled interviews from the respondents. Quantitative data was analyzed using Excel and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)in order to generate frequencies and graphs for easy interpretation and analysis of data, while content analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. The findings of the study revealed that Majority of respondents have acquired entrepreneurship skills including:business management skills, identifying business opportunities,resource management,business planning,innovation and setting up of a business. However, despite the indication by the respondents that they have acquired entrepreneurship skills, these skills are moderate. However,majority of the respondents were not currently running any kind of business. Nevertheless, most of the students indicated that they were planning to set up businesses of their own once they had graduated from college. In addition, the study also established that entrepreneurship education has impacted on employment creation positively. This is attributed to the fact that it has contribute to changing of students mind sets towards self-employment as a career path. In addition, some students were already running their own small enterpriseswithin campus that is even before they graduated from college. While others were planning to set up businesses after they have graduated from college. This therefore has the potential of creating employment for others. However, it was difficult to quantify the number of students who have set up their own business after they had graduated from college because the college had no follow up programmes for such students. This therefore creates more room for further research to be conducted in this area.Therefore the study made the following recommendations among others: (i)The government should revise the TEVET curriculum to further include practical aspects of entrepreneurship education (ii) the college should introduce industrial visits for students in order to enhance the practical skills (iii) developing mentor ship programmes were students will be granted an opportunity to learn from the successful and experienced entrepreneurs(iv) designing incubation programmes for business students that will allow their small businesses to be incubated for a period of time until they had reached a maturity stage which will help business startups to grow effectively.