Managing Functional and Innovative Entrepreneurship Centres for Global Competitiveness in Public Universities in South-South, Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigated approaches and challenges of managing functional and innovative Entrepreneurship Centres for global competitiveness in public universities in South-South, Nigeria. The study adopted descriptive survey design and was guided by two research questions and two hypotheses. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 487 from the population of 9,735 academic staff in the 14 public universities in South-South, Nigeria. Data was collected using a survey questionnaire instrument which was validated for reliability at 0.88. Mean and standard deviation were used to analyse the research questions while z-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings showed that in South-South, Nigeria were not globally competitive. Some of the approaches that could be deployed to improve their global competitiveness included using diverse means to enhance entrepreneurial behaviours and mindsets of the students and adopting extensive use of visuals, digital tools and multimedia to enhance their creativity. The challenges identified include inadequate funding, poor university-industry partnership on Research & Development and inadequate infrastructural facilities. It is recommended that Entrepreneurship Centres in public universities in South-South, Nigeria should be adequately funded and they should adopt relevant approaches in order to become globally competitive.