Entrepreneurial Skills Improvement Needs by Self- Employed Technical College Automobile Technology Graduates in Delta State, Nigeria

The study determined the entrepreneurial skills improvement needs by self-employed technical college automobile technology graduates in Delta State, Nigeria. The study was descriptive survey research design. Three research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study was conducted in Delta State, Nigeria. The population for the study was 76 respondents’ automobile technology self-employed graduates. There was no sampling because of manageable size of the population. A structured questionnaire was designed by the researchers and were used for data collection. The instrument was face and content validated by three experts, two from the Department of Automobile/Metalwork Technology and one from Measurement and Evaluation Unit of the Department of Educational Foundation- all in Nigeria University Nnsukka. The questionnaire was used to collect relevant data. Instrument was trial – tested on 20 respondents who were not part of the population. Copies of the questionnaire was administered through personal contact to the respondents. The reliability of the instrument was determined using Kudar Richardson technique, was used for the study. The correlation coefficient calculated was 0.82. Copies of the instrument were administered to 76 participating automobile technology self-employed graduates and the return rate was 100%. The data collected for the study were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while z-test statistics was employed to test the null hypotheses. Based on the findings of this study, it was concluded that automobile technology self-employed graduates need practical/technical skills, computer diagnostic skills and customer service skills in automobile technology venture to keep up to date with the modern cars service and repairs. This will as well improve the standard of living of self–employed automobile graduates in Delta State. Recommendations was made that the entrepreneurial skills identified in this study should be packaged and use to improve the students before graduation. It was also recommended that the entrepreneurial skills identified should be introduced as one of the compulsory subjects in all secondary schools in the country. Through this methods students who transcend into technical institutions to the university level, would have become conversant with the tenets of entrepreneurial demand. Furthermore, there should be regular seminar, workshops and conferences for improvement needs of graduates to strengthen and refocus on entrepreneurial education.