RE-ORIENTING NIGERIA’S HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR FOR NATIONAL GROWTH IN GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURIAL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

This study argues for a paradigmatic shift of the national tertiary education culture to an entrepreneurial model that is driven by research innovation rooted in strong collaboration between different elements of the national system of innovation. Evidence for the current unenviable status is illustrated by the negative trend in Nigeria's global competitiveness index over the past decade. It is, however, shown that a strong correlation between entrepreneurial growth dynamics and the number of entrepreneurial universities per capita explains the superior performance of the developed and rapidly developing economies. Significantly, we provide, for the first time, a functional mathematical relationship between economic development and per capita entrepreneurial universities, as a useful tool for performance prediction and implementation of national science & technology innovative research policy control. The explicit connectivity between tertiary educational culture, economic environment parameters and the national context descriptors is robustly demonstrated.