ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION AND SKILL ENHANCEMENT OF UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATES IN BAYELSA STATE, NIGERIA

The essence of entrepreneurship education is to inculcate the entrepreneurship spirit and culture in students in order to enhance their skills. This study examined the relationship between entrepreneurship education and skill enhancement of university undergraduates in Bayelsa State. The study adopted a cross-sectional survey research design which is a systematic gathering of information from respondents for the purpose of understanding and/or predicting some aspects of interest of the behaviour of the population. A sample of 379 university undergraduate students were selected from the population of 27,201 in the four universities in Bayelsa State. The hypotheses were tested using Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v23). The findings of the study showed that entrepreneurial innovation and entrepreneurial competency as two proxies for entrepreneurship education were significantly related with skills enhancement of university undergraduates in Bayelsa State. Based on the findings, the study recommends that, in order to keep pace with changes in our environment and fulfil the needs of students, the curriculum for entrepreneurship education should be revised on a regular basis to provide practical skills with regards to critical thinking that would motivate business ideas as well as jobs and wealth generation. Article visualizations