Perceived Management Challenges of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises Among Business Education Students in Colleges of Education in North-East, Nigeria

The study determines the Perceived management Challenges of Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) among Business Education students in Federal Colleges of Education. The design of the study was a descriptive survey. The area of the study was North- East, Nigeria; the population of the study comprises 639 final year Business Education students of Federal Colleges of Education who have to undergo Entrepreneurship Education as a course. The sample size for this study consists of 234 final year business education students that are drawn from the population of 639 students. Based on Krejcie and Morgan, an estimated population above 600 and close to 700 should have a sample size of 234. Therefore, using stratified proportionate random sampling technique, firstly, three Colleges of Education offering business education in the study area are selected and form three strata; that is Federal College of Education (Technical) Gombe, Federal College of Education (Technical) Potiskum and Federal College of Education Yola. Secondly, 36.6% of the population from each stratum was selected using the randomization technique. The instrument for data collection was a structured questionnaire developed by the researcher and was validated by two experts from the Department of Vocational and Technology Education, Faculty of Technology Education, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi. The reliability coefficient of 0.85 was obtained which indicates that the instrument was highly reliable. The data collected was analyzed using mean and standard deviation with Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software, version 23. The findings of the study revealed that students are faced with the challenges of enabling environment in setting up small and medium scale Enterprises; also, the study revealed that there are unstable government policies in managing SMEs among Business Education students. Based on the findings it was recommended that Government should provide enabling environment to support the management of small and medium scale enterprises and to ensure stability in policies formulation by the government and its proper implementation to support the management of small and medium scale enterprises after graduation.