Transforming Nigerian universities into entrepreneurial universities: formulation of a roadmap

Abstract

Universities have always had three key roles to play: teaching, research and community service. However in recent times, they have been expected to excel in a fourth and pivotal new role, that of developers of the economy. In order to achieve this new and important role, they have had to become entrepreneurial in nature and become what has been termed “entrepreneurial universities”. This paper had as its objective the development of a roadmap for Nigerian universities to follow if they truly wanted to excel as developers of the Nigerian economy by becoming entrepreneurial universities. The roadmap covered six critical factors namely government policy, top-management buy-in, availability of finance, availability of infrastructure, quality of staff and entrepreneurship education which are considered vital for any university with aspirations of becoming entrepreneurial in nature. A critical analysis of these six factors as to their prevalence in the Nigerian context revealed that in all six critical factors, Nigerian universities had a lot of work to do to attain the minimum standard required by each of the six critical factors. Most importantly, the analysis revealed that the biggest problem among the six factors lay in the issue of sincere leadership. The authors were of the opinion that until and unless the top management of Nigerian universities put the betterment of these universities as the most important priority rather than their personal self enrichment, none of the other five factors would be attainable, and the dream of Nigerian universities contributing positively to the development of the economy by become more entrepreneurial in nature would remain forever unfulfilled.