YOUTH unemployment has been a problem in Nigeria for decades. This is why policymakers are increasingly turning to entrepreneurship education as a solution. It is hoped that entrepreneurship will reduce reliance on formal jobs and create more opportunities for self-employment.

The unemployment rate stood at 5.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2024, representing a third consecutive increase since the second quarter of 2023. This is close to the 2023 global unemployment rate of 5.1 per cent.

Researchers and policymakers globally view entrepreneurship education as a key solution to youth unemployment.

Nigerian universities have been required since 2006 to teach at least one entrepreneurship course to undergraduates before graduation. All university undergraduates, no matter their course of study, receive entrepreneurship education before graduation.

This is clearly motivated by evidence that graduates who start businesses are most likely to start businesses that employ more workers over time. This should reduce unemployment, especially youth unemployment.

Admittedly, not all high-growth businesses are started by university graduates. However, global evidence shows that the most successful entrepreneurs are also highly educated.

18 years of entrepreneurship education

It is now 18 years since Nigerian universities were required to teach entrepreneurship. There have been limited studies evaluating the impact of the programme. Also, many of these evaluations use small samples and cover only one or two years. Their methodologies equally do not allow for definitive conclusions about the policy’s effectiveness.

As experts on innovation, entrepreneurship and economic development, we recognise that rigorous, long-term evaluations can provide deeper insights. We decided to address these limitations employing a more robust research design.

Our study sought to determine whether entrepreneurship education has had an impact on students. We used data from a sample of over 12,000 Nigerian undergraduates. The results show that despite a strong positive impact at first, the longer the policy has been in place, the weaker its effect.

Declining impact over time

Our latest analyses were based on a pooled dataset from four waves of surveys collected in 2007, 2011, 2016 and 2020/21.

We found that the entrepreneurship course initially had a strong positive impact on students’ expressed intent to start a business. However, this effect had weakened by 2021. The later sets of students did not express as strong an interest in starting a business as the earlier sets of students did.

We compared 12,000 students from six universities. Three started teaching entrepreneurship in 2007, others after 2011. We used advanced statistical methods to compare the students from the two groups of universities. One method helped us see the changes over time in each group. The other method ensured we compared similar types of students to get a fair result.

In 2007, 89 per cent of the students expressed interest in starting a business, while in 2021, 82 per cent did so.

Initially, more (93.7 per cent) students from the universities that started the course earlier were interested in becoming entrepreneurs compared to (73.1 per cent) students at universities that introduced the course later.

By 2016, the difference between the two groups of universities had disappeared (91.4 per cent v. 93.6 per cent).

By 2021, students from universities that started the course later showed greater (95.7 per cent) interest in entrepreneurship than those (70.1 per cent) from the earlier-starting universities.

The results imply that the longer the policy had been implemented in a university, the less its effect. And this raises the need for continuous monitoring of the policy’s effectiveness.

Our research shows that the entrepreneurship course does not fully meet students’ needs. Further, the quality of teaching fluctuates as lecturers change. More importantly, neither the universities nor the national universities commission consistently monitor the course success.

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 helps us understand the immediate effects and how a policy works over time with different target groups.

For example, 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 questions like this will support the design of effective policies.

We identified instantaneous impact as the immediate effects observed shortly (five years) after the policy was implemented. Persistent impact means that the effects of the policy on a group of students last for a long time. This is usually between seven and 10 years after the course.

Cumulative impact involves the additional effects that stem from subsequent interventions. Such include business incubation or small grants to start a business. Consistent impact describes the recurring effects observed across different student cohorts over time. This helps in assessing the broader implications of policy initiatives.

This categorisation offers a plausible explanation for our result. While the policy had an immediate positive effect, it did not maintain the same impact on different groups of students over time. This highlights an important issue: the lack of ongoing evaluation and adaptation of how the policy is implemented. Policies, especially those aimed at education and skill development, must respond and adapt to changing circumstances. Without continuous monitoring even the most well-intentioned policies can become ineffective.

Way forward

Evaluations of educational interventions should be carefully designed to capture both immediate and long-term effects.

Then the curriculum and teaching methods can be modified to better align with the diverse needs of students – and the demands of industry.

The results of these evaluations should be openly shared with university administrators, lecturers, students and the public. There should also be clear accountability for making any recommended changes. This approach fosters trust and ensures that the system evolves to meet the demands of the labour market.

This approach is used in Finland, where the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre’s enhancement-led evaluation ensures that institutions consistently improve their educational offerings.

Abiodun Egbetokun, Senior lecturer, Business Management, De Montfort University and Adedayo Olofinyehun, Researcher, National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.