Entrepreneurial Skills as Correlate of Technical and Vocational Education in Rivers State, Nigeria

The study investigated Entrepreneurial Skills as correlate of Technical and Vocational Education in Rivers State. It adopted the correlational research design. The study operationalized entrepreneurial skills into variables of conceptual, social trading, and computer application skills to correlate with Technical and Vocational Education (TVET). The study used a population of 405 which comprised final-year students in two Rivers State-owned polytechnics and one university in Rivers State Nigeria. It adopted the stratified sampling technique to arrive at 250 as sample size. The study used a questionnaire instrument tagged, “Entrepreneurial Skills and Technical and Vocational Education Questionnaire” (ETVETQ), and used the modified Likert scale of Very High Extent (4), High Extent (3), Low Extent (2), Very Low Extent (1). The instrument was validated by a Measurement and Evaluation expert from the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. The tested reliability of the instrument showed .934>.71 which showed that the instrument was reliable. The three research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the three null hypotheses were tested using Pearson Product Correlation Coefficient (PPMC). The study found that the variables of conceptual skill, social trading skill and computer application skill significantly correlate with Technical and Vocational Education in Rivers State. The study concluded that teachers of Technical and Vocational Education should emphasize the entrepreneurial elements of technical education rather than dwell on mere academic rhetoric. It recommended among others that technical training institutions such as the polytechnics should have a liaison unit with the industrial sector, otherwise termed the Gown and Town Centre, where students would be given direct world of work exposure before graduation.