ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION, INSTITUTIONAL FACTORS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL MOTIVE AMONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN SOUTHWEST, NIGERIA

The high rate of unemployment among Nigerian graduates is alarming and it is due to the imbalance between the expectations of the labour market and the skills possessed by the graduates seeking employment as most of them do not possess the entrepreneur skill when they were in school. Despite the fact that some of the tertiary institutions in Nigeria are conducting entrepreneurship courses, very less prominence was given to the findings towards the effect of entrepreneurship education and their intentions to become entrepreneurs. To this end, overall changes are required in course curriculum. The study investigated entrepreneurship education , environmental and personal factors and entrepreneurial motive among private undergraduate students in Southwest, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design of cross sectional type. The population comprised undergraduate students in Southwest, Nigeria. The convenience sampling technique was used to select two-hundred and forty-students which was used as sample size. A questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, simple percentage and inferential statistics of ANOVA and Pearson's product moment correlation with the use of the Software Package for Service Solution (SPSS) tested at 0.05 level of significance. The finding showed that entrepreneurship education had high impact on entrepreneurial motive  x (3.17). There was a significant influence of environmental and personal factors on entrepreneurial motive (F= 4.304; P<0.05). There is significant positive correlation between entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial motive (r = 0.203**;p<0.05), environmental variability and entrepreneurial motive (r = 0.210, p<0.05), communication skills and entrepreneurial motive (r = 0.331 p<0.05 leadership skills and entrepreneurial motive (r = 0.331 p<0.05). It was recommended that students should sharpen their communication skills and also engage in leadership training program which could make them to possess persuasive skill and become a leader which could make them to become a successful entrepreneur.