Evaluating Entrepreneurial Skills of Students in Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) Institutes"

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is considered as important catalyst for economic growth of the country. One of the best ways to promote entrepreneurship is by development of entrepreneurial skills through education, termed as entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship education plays an important role in promotion of entrepreneurship and enhancing intention of students to become entrepreneurs through development of skills that are pre-requisite to become an entrepreneur. On the other hand acquisition of these skills is influenced by many factors including social culture, family support and perceived value students give to education for development of these skills. Following study is an effort to identify level of entrepreneurial skills and perceived value students give to education for acquisition of these skills, assuming that higher the perceived value students give to education, higher will level of entrepreneurial skills. In order to achieve this aim of the study, students (both alumni and enrolled) from technical and vocational training institutes were selected as population of the study. Selection of this stratum of population in spite of business school owes to the efforts of government to promote entrepreneurship under national skills policy recommendations for this stream of education by giving soft loans and other financial leverages. Multistage sampling technique was used to select sample of the study, at first stage the ten districts were selected through Human Development Index (HDI). At second stage institutes (one from technical stream and second from vocational stream) were selected giving total sample of twenty institutes, while at third stage whole class of students was selected through cluster sample as a result of which 1860 students were selected from technical stream and 383 were selected from vocational stream. The alumni (both entrepreneurs and employed) were chosen through vi convenience sampling technique and in total 98 entrepreneurs and 35 employed alumni took part in the study. Different instruments were used to collect data from sample, depending on objectives of the study, nature of information required and type of respondents. These include; a questionnaire to identify perceived value students gives to education for development of entrepreneurial skills, business plan template with combination of situational judgment test (SJT) for evaluation of skills, interviews for collected data from alumni and content analysis framework for analysis of content of the books. All the instruments were validated through expert opinion, pilot testing and carrying confirmatory factor analysis. Data was analyzed by using multiple techniques for example descriptive statistics was used to identify level of skills and perceptions of students, showing that students have low level of entrepreneurial skills, but also the perceived value they give to education for development of these skills is very low. Similarly independent sample t-test was used to explore effect of demographic factors on perceived value students give to education for development of skills. Correlation (Spearman Rank) was carried out to identify relationship between perceived value and level of skills, representing a positive relationship between both variables. Descriptive analysis was used to analyze responses of semi-structured interviews from alumni. In addition to this content analysis was carried out to identify provision of entrepreneurial skills in content of the courses, based on content analysis framework. The results indicate that students have low level of entrepreneurial skills and large number of students did not get even minimum score on business plan template and SJT. The perceived value they give to education for development of these skills is also low. The entrepreneurs also have same perceptions as indicated by the responses. vii The students who did not chose self-employment as career option have same opinion, they believe that there is need to change in content of the courses as well as teaching pedagogy for development of entrepreneurial skills. On the basis of results it can be suggested that not only the courses need amendments for development of entrepreneurial skills, but teaching methods and institutional environment also need some changes. Teachers‘ training is one of the most important factor that has been ignored previously with particular reference to pedagogies adopted for entrepreneurship education.