Assessment of Entrepreneurial Intentions Among Final-Year Students at the University of Lagos

This study assesses the entrepreneurial intentions of final-year undergraduate students at the University of Lagos, South West Nigeria, examining the motivational, attitudinal, and contextual factors that shape graduates' decisions to pursue self-employment rather than wage employment upon completing their studies. Graduate unemployment remains a persistent challenge in Nigeria, and understanding what drives entrepreneurial intention at the point of graduation is essential for designing effective university-level entrepreneurship support programmes. The study employs a descriptive survey design, administering Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour instrument adapted for the Nigerian graduate context to 280 final-year students drawn from five faculties through stratified random sampling. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression were used to analyse the data. Findings indicate that attitude towards entrepreneurship and perceived behavioural control are the strongest predictors of entrepreneurial intention, while subjective norms, particularly family pressure towards formal employment, significantly dampen entrepreneurial motivation in a substantial proportion of respondents. Students from the Faculty of Business Administration show significantly higher intention scores than those from Science and Engineering faculties, suggesting that curriculum exposure to entrepreneurship content moderates intention. Access to startup capital is identified as the most frequently cited perceived barrier to business entry. Recommendations include embedding experiential entrepreneurship modules into non-business faculty curricula and establishing a university-wide startup grant facility to address capital access barriers. Keywords: entrepreneurial intention, Theory of Planned Behaviour, graduate unemployment, University of Lagos, startup.