ENTREPRENEURS EDUCATION AS A WAY TO IMPROVE ECONOMIC GROWTH OF A COUNTRY

1.0  Introduction

Entrepreneurs and the small businesses they create are of no doubt economic stimulators. Through proper training techniques, societies create entrepreneurs that develop small businesses and as well maximize the economic potentials of the state, especially that of the rural areas of the state.

Entrepreneurship is the purposeful activity (including an integrated sequence of decisions) of an individual or group of associated individuals, under-taken to initiate, maintain, or aggrandize a profit-oriented business unit for the production or distribution of economic goods and services (Nwachukwu, 1990). Entrepreneurship at least in all non-authoritarian societies constitute a bridge between society as a whole, especially the non-economic aspect of that society, and the profit oriented institutions established to take off its economic development  and to satisfy, as best they can, its economic desires.

Schumpeter (1994) defines entrepreneurship as the ability to perceive and undertake business opportunities, taking advantage of scarce resource utilisation. In simplest form, entrepreneurship is the willingness and the ability to seek out investment opportunities and to run an enterprise for profit. In this later sense, entrepreneurship takes premium over capital. It is equally more fundamental than capital because capital formation is the result of entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurs are therefore regarded as central figures in economic development. Their contributions run through labour actions, movement of capital goods and conversion of raw materials into finished products, and ultimately, effectual distribution of the products to final consumers. Entrepreneurs are therefore those who search and discover economic opportunities, marshal the financial and other resources necessary for the development of the opportunities, evaluate alternatives available in the environment and allocate resources to the most profitable ones and as well take the ultimate responsibility for the management and/or successful execution of opportunities. An Entrepreneur is somewhat comfortable with taking and assuming risks which are impassioned with the dream being pursued. He or she knows where to get help, and when it is needed, and as well as being ever ready to receive changes in the business surrounding environment (Schumpeter, 1994). Consequently, universities should commence training high level manpower whose characteristics are usually obsessive, focused, articulate, and resourceful. In this way graduates will turn out typically charismatic leaders, and tend to be introspective in the skills of job creation, wealth generation and innovative skill utilization.

Empowering the Nigerian people towards wealth creation, employment generation, poverty reduction and value re-orientation (NEEDS, 2005), is a foremost cardinal point for strategic macro-economic framework.  This also reflects in the recent increase in the demand for educational programmes in entrepreneurship in the country’s tertiary institutions, parastatals and non-governmental paradigms. If fully satisfied, this new vision and values would shine the spotlight on small medium scale business activities in Nigeria. Thus, increased education on entrepreneurial skills would create that perfect opportunity to stimulate economic growth. Institutions are therefore to properly train individuals who will have the right tools necessary to commence and grow successful businesses with reduced risk of failure.

Entrepreneurship education and training becomes very important    machinery to meet this national goal. Nevertheless, while it is not absolutely necessary for an individual to obtain entrepreneurship training to be successful, obtaining an entrepreneurial education serves as a tremendous advantage to increasing the chances of success as an entrepreneur. This is because training is still focused and directed at achieving a purpose while education is all encompassing. Thus, great strides are required to be made towards the goal of educating people to become entrepreneurs to enhance economic growth and development. It is against this background that this write-up in its other subsequent aspects tends to examine:

• The theoretical framework for the subject under discussion,
• Underlying issues in entrepreneurial education in Nigeria,
• Efforts toward entrepreneurial development in Nigeria,
• Entrepreneurial education and economic growth development,

Conclusion and Recommendations

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