WHY WE SET UP ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES IN VARSITIES – FG
• Prof. Rufa'i
The best way to solve the current problem of unemployment is by ensuring that students in institutions of higher learning undertake compulsory entrepreneurship study. This is the view of the Director for Students Support Services Department of National Universities Commission (NUC), Hajiya Uwani Yahya.
Yahya who made this view known in a presentation that she made at a consultative meeting with Vice Chancellors of the nation's universities in Abuja, pointed out that government has been strategizing for the past three years to ensure its workability.
The Federal Government, she said, in 2006 set up entrepreneurship studies and made it compulsory for students of higher education institutions irrespective of area of specialization and in most universities, entrepreneurship studies have been adopted as a compulsory general studies course for students.
'The overall objective is to continuously foster entrepreneurship culture amongst students and faculty with a view of not only educating them but to also support graduates of the system towards establishing and also maintaining sustainable business ventures, including but not limited to those arising from research,' she noted.
She said The NUC was given presidential directives by the Ministry of Education to supervise and coordinate the programme of introducing entrepreneurship education in Nigerian institutions of high learning, in collaboration with all regulatory bodies of high institutions, the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) to be handled by the committee set up by the federal government.
According to her, NUC is playing a vital role in the transmission and implementation of federal government's policy and part of the expected outcome were; establishing entrepreneurship study in all high institutions, establishing the curriculum for the course, the development of teachers guide, instruction manual and students' handbook for sale as well as capacity building for at least ten lecturers in each university, establishment of entrepreneurship resource and knowledge centers in the NUC, capacity-building for at least ten teachers in all universities and development Of Masters and Ph. D programmes in some selected universities.
The team also anticipated that by the end of the first three years of establishing the programme (which would have been November, December 2010) at least 50,000 graduates that would have gone through the system are entrepreneurially skilled with at least 10,000 out of the 50,000 being self-employed and self-reliant, she said. The NUC, she revealed, has also conducted a lot of workshops to create awareness about the need for acquiring entrepreneurial skills. NUC has also established international collaboration with many establishments and institutions like the National Science Foundation of United States of America, the British Council and a host of others have all signed memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the NUC.
Yahya added that funding for the establishment of entrepreneurship centers to ensure full implementation is one of the major challenges and the reason why many universities don't have functional centers in their institutions. However, she noted, the fact that the Minister of Education Prof. Ruquyyatu Ahmed Rufa'i has assured that all states and federal universities will be sponsored by Education Trust Fund (ETF) should challenge universities to evolve ways to foster entrepreneurship especially in their innovative research activities for transfer to industries including establishing productive centers in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.