Effect of entrepreneurship education on students’ self-employment, job creation and job seeking intentions in National Polytechnics in Western Kenya

Abstract

In Kenya youth entrepreneurship education was and is being emphasized as the best way of empowering youth with entrepreneurship skills for self-employment and job creation. Despite these emphases, many youths leaving higher learning institutions in Kenya have no stable source of earning a living and unemployment among them is the song of the day. This study hence sought to investigate the effect of entrepreneurship education on self-employment, job creation and job seeking intentions of entrepreneurship education students in their final year of study in National Polytechnics in western Kenya. Objectives of the study included: To establish the relationship between students’ characteristics ( age and gender) and self-employment , job creation and job seeking intentions; to determine the influence teaching of methods have on self- employment , job creation and job seeking intentions; to establish perception of students towards entrepreneurship education for self-employment , job creation and job seeking intentions and to find out the influence of students’ family entrepreneurial background on their self-employment , job creation and job seeking intentions. The study was guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior by Ajzen (1991). All the 5 National Polytechnics in Western Kenya were targeted, with only 2 being selected using simple random sampling technique. The study targeted 273 students from the selected polytechnics all being purposively selected. The research adopted descriptive survey research design. Data was collected using questionnaires. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics of (percentages and frequencies) and inferential statistics (Chi-square and Freeman Halton Tests [FH] to test the relationships between independent and dependent variables. The findings revealed that age influenced job seeking intentions (FH, p < .001) but did not influence students’ self-employment (FH, p =.32) and job creation (FH, p =.79) intentions; gender influenced job seeking intentions X 2 (2)=12.219,p=.002) but did not influence students’ self-employment (FH, p =.269) and job creation intention (  2 (2) =5.409, p =.067); Passive methods of learning like lecture were frequently used and they did not influence job creation intention of students (FH, p = .6097) but influenced self-employment (FH, p = .0137) and job seeking (FH, p = .002); whereas, active methods like field trip were less used making students not being ready for self-employment (FH, p = .2998) and job creation (FH, p =.048) leaving a significant majority of them preparing to seek employment (  2 (2) = 15.922, p =.003) after study. Students had positive perception towards entrepreneurship education and they agreed that it influenced their self-employment and job creation intentions and family entrepreneurial background of students influenced their job creation intentions (FH, p =.0002).This study concluded that students were not well prepared to be self-employed and create jobs upon graduation since passive teaching methods were frequently used as opposed to active teaching methods that could trigger students towards self-employment and job creation hence majority of the students being left for job seeking intentions. The study recommends that entrepreneurship education tutors should use active methods that foster entrepreneurial culture among students. Kenya institute of curriculum development should work closely with curriculum implementers to review entrepreneurship education curriculum to make it more practical oriented.