A call for more entrepreneurship education in non-business programs at South African TVET Colleges

Abstract

There has been an increase in the number of unemployed Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) graduates even though these institutions are meant to train students for a particular job, several employment opportunities or self-employment. While proactive higher learning institutions acted on the need to equip graduates with entrepreneurial skills, others have not. More concerning is that even those who do not include entrepreneurial education in their curricula expect their graduates to be self-employed if they cannot find employment upon graduation. This article ascertained the extent, to which TVET colleges equipped their graduates for self-employment by including entrepreneurial skills in their programmes. Grounded on the contingency organizational theory, this article ascertained the necessity to incorporate entrepreneurship education in non-business programmes at TVET colleges. Data was collected from the TVET colleges, websites, brochures and documents of all the public TVET colleges in South Africa. The findings indicated that only 42 % of the programmes offered entrepreneurship education in their curricula. Moreover and interestingly, the province with the highest prevalence of entrepreneurship education (49 %) in their programmes is Limpopo and not the Western Cape, the financial capital. Consequently, there is a vital need to implement entrepreneurship education in all non-business programmes, for it may increase business start-ups, innovation and improve on the employability rate of the graduates.