Youth unemployment has been a persistent issue in Nigeria for decades, which is why policymakers are increasingly turning to entrepreneurship education as a potential solution. It is hoped that entrepreneurship will reduce reliance on formal employment and create more opportunities for self-employment.
The unemployment rate stood at 5.3% in the first quarter of 2024, marking the third consecutive increase since the second quarter of 2023. This figure is close to the global unemployment rate of 5.1% in 2023.
Researchers and policymakers worldwide see entrepreneurship education as a key solution to youth unemployment.
Since 2006, Nigerian universities have been required to teach at least one entrepreneurship course to undergraduates before they graduate. This requirement applies to all university students, regardless of their course of study.
This policy is motivated by evidence showing that graduates who start businesses are more likely to create enterprises that employ more workers over time, which should help reduce unemployment, particularly youth unemployment.
However, not all high-growth businesses are started by university graduates. Yet, global evidence suggests that the most successful entrepreneurs tend to be well-educated.
18 Years of Entrepreneurship Education
It has now been 18 years since Nigerian universities were mandated to teach entrepreneurship. However, there have been few studies evaluating the impact of the programme, and many of these evaluations use small samples and focus on just one or two years. Additionally, the methodologies employed do not allow for definitive conclusions about the policy’s effectiveness.
As experts in innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic development, we recognise that rigorous, long-term evaluations can provide deeper insights. Therefore, we sought to address these limitations by employing a more robust research design.
Our study aimed to determine whether entrepreneurship education has had a tangible impact on students. We analysed data from a sample of over 12,000 Nigerian undergraduates. The results show that, while there was a strong positive impact initially, the longer the policy had been in place, the weaker its effect.
Declining Impact Over Time
Our latest analyses, based on a pooled dataset from four surveys conducted in 2007, 2011, 2016, and 2020/21, revealed that the entrepreneurship course initially had a strong positive impact on students’ intention to start a business. However, by 2021, this effect had diminished. Later sets of students expressed less interest in starting a business than the earlier cohorts.
We compared 12,000 students from six universities. Three of these began teaching entrepreneurship in 2007, while the others did so after 2011. Using advanced statistical methods, we compared the students from these two groups of universities. One method helped us observe changes over time in each group, while another ensured we compared similar types of students to obtain a fair result.
In 2007, 89% of students expressed an interest in starting a business, while in 2021, 82% did so. Initially, 93.7% of students from universities that introduced the course earlier were interested in entrepreneurship, compared to 73.1% at universities that started teaching the course later.
By 2016, the gap between the two groups had closed (91.4% versus 93.6%), and by 2021, students from universities that introduced the course later showed a greater interest in entrepreneurship (95.7%) than those from earlier-starting universities (70.1%).
These results suggest that the longer the policy had been in place, the less effective it became. This highlights the need for ongoing monitoring to assess the policy’s impact.
Our research indicates that the entrepreneurship course does not fully meet students’ needs. The quality of teaching also fluctuates as lecturers change, and there is no consistent monitoring of the course’s success by either the universities or the National Universities Commission.
Policies Can Have Different Effects
In our study, we introduced a new way to categorise the different types of effects that a policy or programme can have. This approach helps us understand both the immediate effects and how a policy evolves over time with different target groups.
For instance, if the entrepreneurship education policy improved students’ interest in entrepreneurship last year, will it have the same effect on a new group of students this year, assuming nothing else changes? Answering such questions helps refine policy design.
We categorised the impact into four types:
- Instantaneous impact, referring to the immediate effects observed within five years of the policy’s implementation.
- Persistent impact, describing effects that last for seven to 10 years after the policy’s introduction.
- Cumulative impact, which involves the additional effects of subsequent interventions, such as business incubation or small grants.
- Consistent impact, which refers to recurring effects observed across different student cohorts over time.
This categorisation offers a plausible explanation for our results. While the policy had an immediate positive effect, its impact weakened with time and was not consistent across different groups of students. This underscores the importance of ongoing evaluation and adaptation in how the policy is implemented.
The Way Forward
Evaluations of educational interventions should be carefully designed to capture both immediate and long-term effects. This will allow the curriculum and teaching methods to be adjusted to better meet students’ needs and the demands of the industry.
The results of these evaluations should be openly shared with university administrators, lecturers, students, and the public. There should be clear accountability for implementing any recommended changes. This approach fosters trust and ensures that the system evolves to meet the demands of the labour market.
This method of evaluation is used in Finland, where the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre’s enhancement-led evaluation ensures that institutions consistently improve their educational offerings.
