Social entrepreneurship empowerment of business education students for sustainability of the Nigerian economy

Alao, Olusegun Ezekiel

Abstract

The prevalence of social, economic and environmental issues and problems around the world seems to surpass what the traditional entrepreneurship education could handle. Hence, the emergence of social entrepreneurship education as a complement to the traditional entrepreneurship education and empowerment for achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs 2030). Therefore, this study was carried out to determine the social entrepreneurship awareness and orientation of Business Education students in tertiary institutions to ensure their empowerment for realizing the Sustainable Development of the Nigerian economy. The study raised and answered two related research questions and also formulated and tested three relevant research hypotheses. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised all final-year Business Education students in public universities and public colleges of education in Lagos State, Nigeria. The sample size for this study consisted of one hundred and five (105) final-year Business Education students randomly selected from the sampled population. The research instrument used was structured questionnaire. The Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient used to determine the internal consistency of the research instrument yielded an average index of 0.85. The research questions and hypotheses data were analysed using mean and t-test statistical tools respectively. Findings show that Business Education students had little awareness and orientation about social entrepreneurship education, and were ill-empowered for Sustainable Development Goals 2030. It was recommended that social entrepreneurship education content and instructional strategies should be included in the curricula, with collaboration among the students, the institutions and the communities.

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