Business Education Students’ Perception of Social Entrepreneurship Opportunities for Sustainable Economy of Nigeria

Abstract

Empowering Business Education students to solve the social, economic and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century demands for proper students’ perception of entrepreneurship opportunities in the society. Therefore, this study was carried out to examine Business Education students’ perception of social entrepreneurship opportunities for sustainable economy of Nigeria. The study raised and answered one related research question 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 students of Business Education randomly selected from the two sampled tertiary institutions. The research instrument used was structured questionnaire. The reliability coefficient of the validated questionnaire using Cronbach Alpha method was 0.85. The research questions and hypotheses data were analysed using mean and t-test statistical tools respectively. The results, among others, showed that Business Education students had proper perception of social entrepreneurship opportunities in the communities. However, female students were found to have better perception than the male counterparts did. In addition, university students had better perception than the students did at the college of education. Therefore, it was recommended, among others, that more innovative and experiential approaches should be employed for teaching and learning of both commercial and social entrepreneurship content of Business Education curriculum at tertiary education levels, with greater focus on the students from colleges of education for achieving sustainable economy in Nigeria.