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.