An assessment of the contribution of education to entrepreneural development in Kenya: The case ot the Kenya institute of management

Abstract

This paper discusses the research that was carried out to assess the usefulness of the educational solutions that were adopted to respond to government policy of enhancing entrepreneurial development. The main argument of the thesis is that entrepreneurs are not always born, they can be made and developed through appropriate education and training. The purpose of the study was to determine whether there is a causal relationship between entrepreneurial development and education using the Entrepreneurial Development Unit (EDU) of the Kenya Institute of Management (KIM) as an illustrative case. Taking the conceptual perspective that human capital formation is an essential process to the socio-economic development of nations, the study had five objectives and three research questions. It was a qualitative study looking at a single institution as an illustrative case of a policy intervention to enhance entrepreneurship. The study used the poisson process of the stochastic family of models to assess the contribution of education to entrepreneurial development. The sample size for the study included 50 EDU graduates sampled using cluster sampling techniques such as area sampling and systematic list sampling. ; 10 government officials, 15 train¬ers and other staff from KIM and 2 officials from the sponsoring body - all of whom were purposively sampled because they were viewed as information-rich cases. Questionnaires, inter¬views, observation checklists and document study were the instruments that were used to collect data.