The Effect of Entrepreneurial Education on the Performance of Cooperative Business in Anambra State Polytechnic Mgbakwu, Awka, South-east, Nigeria

This study is on the effect of entrepreneurial education on the performance of selected cooperative businesses in Anambra state polytechnic Mgbakwu, Awka, Nigeria. The study was necessitated as a result of collapses or folding up of many cooperative businesses due to the level of competition in the contemporary turbulent and globalized environment. The broad objective was: to investigate the effect of entrepreneurial education on the performance of selected cooperatives in Anambra state polytechnics (ANSPOLY).  The specific objectives were to; ascertain the effect of innovation on the performance of selected cooperatives, to examine the effect of creativity on the performance of selected cooperatives. In line with the above objectives, two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study.  The study was carried out using a survey design. The population of the study was 185 from the two (2) selected cooperatives under study. A sample size of 127 was obtained from the population using sloven formula at (5% error margin). The instrument used for data collection was questionnaire structured on a 5-point Likert Scale. Designed instrument was validated through content validity using five experts from both the industry and academia. Cronbach’s Alpha 0.700 – 0.872) were used to establish instrument reliability. Data were analyzed with the aid of SPSS version 23. The descriptive statistics were the mean and standard deviation, whilst the inferential statistics was a Multiple Linear Regression analysis to assess the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. Findings indicated that: the processed data had a significance level of 0.000, which shows that the data is ideal for concluding the population parameters as the value of significance (p-value) is less than 0.05. More so, the calculated value was greater than the critical value (16.811>3.499) which means that the null hypotheses were rejected, an indication that there was a significant effect of entrepreneurial education on the business performance of cooperative enterprises. It was also revealed that holding the Entrepreneurial Education (EE) to a constant zero, the Business Performance (BP) of cooperative enterprises would stand at 25.388. Nevertheless, the EE dimensions are as follows:   a unit increase in Innovativeness (IN) would lead to an increase in BP by a factor of 0.803; with IN being significant at 0.000. Furthermore, a unit increase in Creativity (C) would significantly lead to an increase in the BP by a factor of 0.719; with PA being significant at 0.013. This shows that innovativeness and creativity have positive effect on cooperative business performance. Conclusively it is very vital for cooperative enterprises to have their entrepreneurial education (EE) fortified as this study has shown that overall, entrepreneurial education has a significant effect on business performance. The study recommends that entrepreneurial development initiative that aims at building the EE dimensions of cooperative enterprises, should focus on innovativeness and creativity.