A Comparative Study Of The Entrepreneurial Characteristics Of Architecture And Building Students: Evidences From A Developing Economy

Abstract

Nigeria like every other nation is in a race to achieve vision 2020. One of the goals articulated by the National Technical Working Group on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) is to increase entrepreneurship and raise employment contribution to 60 percent by 2015 & 80 percent by 2020. The number of entrepreneurs in a country can be increased by several means including education. However, entrepreneurship had been considered a subject mainly for students with a predominantly business background. Nowadays, entrepreneurship is gaining much ground

even among other disciplines with a non-business background. The aim of this research is to compare the entrepreneurial characteristics of architecture and building students of Covenant University, Nigeria. Students responded to a 10-item questionnaire. Mann-Whitney test was used to test the hypothesis of the study. The findings revealed that there is no statistically significant difference between the entrepreneurial characteristics of creativity, self-confidence /awareness, risk - taking propensity and need for achievement of architecture and building students. The findings also revealed that most of the students have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. Although Covenant University is already empowering all its graduates entrepreneurially to contribute significantly to the socio-economic development of the country, it is suggested that government should put institutional frameworks in place that would drive the teaching of entrepreneurial courses in other higher institutions of learning so as to facilitate the achievement of its goal of increasing entrepreneurship by 2020.