The transition to work for Ghanaian youth can be challenging faced with high unemployment and graduate unemployment, job market uncertainties, and the mandatory national service program ( Oppong & Sachs, 2015). Within these macro-level contextual issues, the experiences and opinions of the youth are drowned out. In this paper, we argue that regardless of calls from universities and other stakeholders for graduate entrepreneurial venturing, the respondents of this study still hoped for formal sector employment making the entrepreneurship training received of little or no importance.

The Ghanaian economy, on an upward trajectory for the last 3 decades, suddenly hit a snag in the last 3 years ( Bondzie et al., 2021; Baah-Boateng, 2015a, Ajayi & Anyidoho, 2017) along with many other countries worldwide due to the covid pandemic. However, even before the current economic crises, youth unemployment and graduate unemployment had always been a problem ( Bawakyillenuo et al., 2013; Baah-Boateng, 2015a), thus the percentage of graduates that are available to work, actively seeking jobs but are without jobs is high ( Ampong, 2020). As of 2021 estimates, the unemployment rate in Ghana was at approximately 4.7 percent of the total labour force, although reliable data on unemployment is limited, World Bank indicators estimate that the numbers of youth are about 65% of the unemployed ( Ampong, 2020). According to a World Bank report, as many as 50% of graduates who leave Ghanaian universities and polytechnics fail to find jobs two years after national service, and 20% do not find jobs for three years after graduation ( Robb et al., 2014). In Ghana, the national service program started in 1973, is a mandatory step from tertiary institutions to work. According to Segbenya et al. (2021), the program serves as a means for National Service Personnel (NSPs) to acquire some practical work experience, give back to the country for their education, gain and enhance their employability skills and in addition, the program eases the transiting into the job market ( Santiana et al., 2022). The national service personnel (tertiary graduates) are posted to serve in all sectors of the economy, to either private or public organizations who request service from the National Service Secretariate. They serve as the most refined job market entrants with some level of acquired employable skills as compared to their counterparts in school transitioning into the job market ( Ajayi, 2016; Schroyens et al., 2019; Segbenya et al., 2021). Some other countries including, Singapore, Nigeria, Switzerland, Turkey, Norway, Sweden, and Eritrea, etc. have various forms of national service for their youth. Although some have suggested that the service program rather complicates and prolongs the transition to work, and still leaves the graduates unemployed afterward ( Mahama et al., 2013), other research points out that tertiary graduates perceive the national service as equipping them with skills and experience to make the transition to work smoother (Segbenya et al., 2021) which mostly does not turn out to be so.

The unemployment problem in Ghana has been exacerbated by the freeze on public sector employment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a loan conditionality from 2015 to 2019 ( Zakaria, & Alhassan, 2019). However, the issue of graduate unemployment has largely been placed at the doorstep of tertiary institutions. The argument is that a lot of what is taught in the institutions is irrelevant to the human resource needs of the country and industry ( Bawakyillenuo et al., 2013). Some researchers argue that although the higher education sector in sub-Saharan Africa is expanding, the expansion is not accompanied by an increase in quality training and skills development ( Azcona et al. 2008). This is generally attributed to inadequate funding for tertiary education, low levels of investment in research and development ( Abugre, 2018; Twene, 2014), and weak linkages between tertiary institutions and industry ( Mensah & Gordon, 2020). The cumulative effect of these problems is a mismatch between the skills, which graduates acquire from tertiary institutions and those that are sought after in the labour markets ( Bawakyillenuo et al., 2013; Damoah et al., 2021; Segbenya et al., 2021). This is evidenced by the reports that despite high graduate unemployment, many organizations struggle to fill vacancies ( International Labour Organization ILO, 2012). See Oppong & Sachs, (2015) for a full explanation of the skills mismatch and the skills oversupply hypotheses. Another aspect of this issue is that in addition to job-specific skills, employers increasingly seek soft skills that graduates do not possess or are not trained in ( Assan & Nalutaaya, 2018; Segbenya et al., 2021). These are non-role-specific skills that include ability to communicate, leadership, attention to detail, emotional intelligence, computer and technical literacy, team player and effective time management skills ( Botha & Botha, 2022; United Nations, 2018; Segbenya et al., 2021). Segbenya et al., (2023) found in their research investigating the skills most appreciated by employers of graduates that most of the newly employed graduates lack the ability to work well under pressure and unsupervised, technical and computer skills, and data processing skills. In addition, they found that female graduates were less likely to possess these technical skills and more likely than males to possess written and verbal communication skills.

Due to the high graduate unemployment rates, current economic challenges, and technological advances, entrepreneurship has been promoted as the answer for the teeming youth exiting tertiary institutions ( Gough & Langevang 2016; Honeyman 2016). There have been many calls for graduates of tertiary institutions to turn to entrepreneurship and in response, several universities and institutions have introduced entrepreneurship courses and modules into their programs ( Denanyoh et al., 2015). Entrepreneurship and self-employment are used interchangeably in this work although there are conceptual differences between the two (see Ajayi and Anyidoho, 2017). According to Kelley et al. (2011), entrepreneurship can provide a source of income when an economy cannot supply enough jobs or other alternatives for generating wages or salaries and providing positive social value. With many calls for entrepreneurship, educational institutions have responded by setting up modules and courses for students. However, a lot of research has focused on what the antecedents of individual entrepreneurship projections are with less research on the economic structures in place to help graduates and potential entrepreneurs navigate this path.

According to research by Denanyoh et al. (2015), the outlook is not exactly bright for Ghanaian entrepreneurs in terms of the business climate because they feel strongly that the regulatory set-up within the country is not conducive for the development of local entrepreneurship. Some of the problems highlighted include inaccessible financing and high interest rates, high taxes, and governmental policies that favour foreign enterprises at the expense of local entrepreneurs, lack of key infrastructural investments, such as roads, and consistent supply of electricity and clean water ( Thompson Agyapong et al., 2018; Mohammed & Bunyaminu, 2022). Corruption and bureaucratic impediments to registering and licensing a business were also cited as barriers. All these make the likelihood of successful employment by graduates unfeasible ( Padi & Musah, 2022; Adams & Quagraine, 2018).

In addition, calls for graduate venturing into entrepreneurship are viewed as blaming the graduate for their unemployment or seen as not having done enough to help themselves ( Oppong, 2013). Oppong further argues that many of the graduates do not have the basic requirements such as social capital (e.g. networks), human capital (e.g. experience and knowledge), financial capital (e.g. funding), and psychological capital (e.g. resilience) for starting their own business, Another aspect of this issue is the unrealistic expectations of graduates about the working field as several studies have shown how new work entrants tend to have unrealistic expectations, especially about having higher-level jobs than they are actually given ( Nicholson, & Arnold, 1991).

Under this mire of issues, the voices and expectations of graduates themselves are drowned out, their expectations hang out of balance, and they may have a different perception about the education they had had. All these remains unanswered, and this study explored aspects of these outstanding questions. A few previous studies ( Alhassan et al., 2018) have reiterated that generally graduates in Ghana are satisfied with their education but how positively they view the job market and career prospects remains unanswered. There is a dearth of studies on tertiary graduates’ perceptions on the role and/or importance of the entrepreneurship modules taught and this must be empirically assessed so their opinions and perceptions will be considered in any evidence-based interventions to address the incessant graduate unemployment in the country. Though the tertiary institutions on their part included entrepreneurship modules to final year students with hope that after graduation most of them will be inspired to venture into businesses themselves. This study argues that with all the efforts by the tertiary institutions and calls from stakeholders for graduate entrepreneurial venturing, graduates still hope to get a formal sector employment regardless of the entrepreneurship training received. The study, therefore, investigated the opinions, experiences, and aspirations of graduates recently out of tertiary institutions around the country to determine their thoughts on their university education, their job market prospects, and what they deem as important within this transition.

This study adopted a cross-sectional design with a quantitative approach and with the permission of the National Service Scheme secretariat in Ghana studied graduates at one point in time. All registered national service personnel (NSP) from all the tertiary institutions across Ghana including Universities, Technical Universities, Polytechnics, colleges of education, and all private tertiary institutions formed part of the study. The final selection of participants was a non-random sample of a thousand, and eleven NSPs ( n=1011) from (73) different institutions across the country who willingly responded to the questionnaire posted on the National Service Secretariat website concerning the study. Ethical clearance was sought from the College of Basic and Applied Sciences Ethics Committee and as per the requirements informed consent was first sought from willing participants before they were asked to fill out the questionnaire. The first page of the online questionnaire was the information page explaining the goals of the study with written informed consent obtained from the participants through web page before the actual survey questions started. The semi-structured questionnaire included questions on demographics, work, and postgraduate education intentions (if any) and perceptions about their tertiary education. Specific information required under the various headings are discussed below.

The demographic characteristics of importance in this study were, age, gender, the tertiary institution attended, religious affiliation, nationality and course of study. The results from these are presented in Table 1 below.

More male respondents (738(73%) than females (273(27%) responded to the questions for the study. The ages of the respondents ranged from 15 to 49 with a mean age of 26.22 and a standard deviation of 4.35. Most of the respondents were graduates from the major universities in Ghana, notably the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and University of Ghana, meanwhile, there was however, a good representation and spread respondents from other tertiary institutions across Ghana, an important requirement for a variety of responses for a study such as this. In Ghana currently, there are (10) public universities, eighty-one (81) private tertiary institutions offering degree programs, eight (8) tutorial colleges, two (2) public polytechnics, and one (1) private polytechnic, thirty-nine public colleges of education, seven (7) private colleges of education, one regionally–owned (West Africa) tertiary institution, five(5) chartered private institutions, eight (8) technical universities, five (5) registered foreign institutions and seven (7) public universities/professional institutions that are accredited respectively ( Damoah et al., 2021). In terms of the nationality of the respondents, most of them (99%) were Ghanaian as expected with only 1% of other nationalities (one each from India, Brazil, Pakistan, United States, Benin and Nigerian). Most were Christians (approx. 80%) and a few (approx. 9%) Moslems, and the rest were classified as others (including Traditional religion, Atheist, Bahai faith, etc.). Anecdotal evidence suggests that all these religious affiliations encourage independence through venturing into entrepreneurship.

The respondents’ intentions after the national service program were assessed and their responses have been presented in Table 2 below.

The respondents brought out their intentions after the national service and majority of them (approx. 85%, refer to Table 2 above) had plans to work full time or part time, however, only a few of these graduates (approx. 8%) indicated their readiness to start their own business with the remaining believing to get employed by someone else. A little above one third (approx. 33%) indicated their readiness to further their education to the postgraduate level with approximately 24% intending to work in addition not schooling. Approximately 13% intends to travel outside either to work full time or part time and school with very few (approx. 3%) who weren’t sure what to do after the national service program. Although there were gender differences in the intentions after national service, these differences were not significant X ² (5, N = 1011) = 9.85, p = .08) however, intentions to start their own business showed a statistical significance (9.3%, p = .01) meaning more males than females (4.4%) were interested in starting their own businesses after national though all of them were introduced to entrepreneurship course(s) before graduation. Chi-square tests of independence revealed that there was a significant relationship ( χ ² (1) = 7.741, p = 0.005) between taking an entrepreneurial course at school and having intentions to start own business. But such significance did not reflect in the respondents’ intentions after national service in real life situation. Few questions may arise from this finding as to whether there is a need to reassess the entrepreneurship modules run in the tertiary institutions in Ghana or there may be other factors that needs to be present to provide an enabling environment for graduates to utilize the knowledge they gain from the entrepreneurial modules or there is a need for whole paradigm shift.

The perceptions of their graduates on the education received was analysed to ascertain whether they felt there should be additional competencies to be provided by their institutions. It is interesting to note that many (approx. 96% refer to Table 3 below) believed that they had been prepared adequately for work and were very confident in the education they have had (89%) and were very satisfied with their course of study as well (approx. 83%) but a little more than half of them (approx. 52%) felt the institutions needs to teach them more practical skills, while approx. 43% think that the institutions needs to help the students get placements for internships. Further, more than one-third (approx. 36%) felt that the institutions need to provide career counselling for their students, while a little above one-fifth (approx. 22%) believed that the institutions must organize career fairs or provide information about jobs in addition. It must be noted however that the career and counselling units in the various tertiary institutions are mandated to organize these additional services the graduates in this study are requesting for, however, interaction with a director of the unit at the University of Ghana revealed that student’s patronage in these career fairs they organize on semester basis have been woefully disappointing and nothing to write home about.

A little below two-thirds (approx. 62%) believed that having practical skills not only the theoretical knowledge is very important to set them up or help them get jobs. This finding contradicts the core mandate of most universities in Ghana, because they are mandated to teach knowledge and it is the responsibility of the student to apply what is learnt, however, adding other dimensions such as practical aspects is mostly desired. Probably these graduates are drawing attention to those desired aspects. A little above one-third (38%) felt human skills such as eloquence, social skills and confidence are very important while one-fifth (20%) felt previous work experience matters and approximately 22% believed using one’s networks can really help set them up or get a job. A critical analysis of the factors as mentioned above shows that these factors were all characteristics an entrepreneur needs to be able to succeed, interestingly the graduates felt they needed them to be employed by someone else not necessarily starting their own business. The basis for the foregone argument is that approximately one-third (33%) felt that to get a job depends on your course of study while approximately one-fifth (20%) felt the final class you get was important in that regard, although these are not necessarily the requirements for an individual to set him/herself up in business, supporting the claim this paper is making. Close to 7% felt that they needed some luck to get a job or set themselves while a few (approx. 1%) believed it can only take God to help them. Mentioning God is not surprising because majority of the respondents (refer to Table 1) indicated their associations with some religious beliefs.

The results reveal that a little less than one-third of the graduates (64%) preferred formal sector employment even in the face of labour market uncertainties and calls for self-employment. Thirty-three (33%) had a preference to work in government jobs like indicated in previous research findings (e.g. Ajayi, 2016; Zakaria & Alhassan, 2018). However, over the years, there have been efforts to take pressure off the government as the largest employer including a freeze on public sector employment over a period to promote self-employment, however, evidently as the findings reveal, graduates still prefer being employed either in the private or public sector with government being their first choice, regardless of the calls for graduates to consider venturing into entrepreneurship due to the current high rates of general unemployment ( Honeyman 2016), confirming the argument this study is making that the entrepreneurship module being taught in the universities in Ghana makes little or no impact on the students work intentions after graduation. Even though less than 10% of the graduates in this study had intentions of starting their own business after their national service ( Baah-Boateng, 2015b). It is interesting to note that there was a significant correlation between taking an entrepreneurship course at school and having entrepreneurship intentions and this probably explains why many tertiary institutions in Ghana are incorporating undergraduate entrepreneurship courses into their curricula ( Owusu-Ansah & Poku, 2012; Agyemang et al., 2020; Mahama et al., 2023). However, regardless of the statistical significance, and the efforts of the universities, only 8% of the graduates used in this study had intentions of starting their own businesses. This is worth further investigation because research (such as Owusu-Ansah & Poku, 2012) have stressed some barriers preventing graduates from venturing into business startups as economic (lack of seed capital, availability of technical skills); legal (business registration challenges, constraints of legal regulation, bribery), socio-cultural (environmental conditions, religious and social stigma) and personal barriers (fear of failure, bad experiences of others and themselves and lack of content-specific knowledge) ( Amanamah et al., 2018).

The sharp contrast in gender and entrepreneurial intentions after the national service program was a bit worrying as females were less likely to venture into entrepreneurship compared to their males in this study. This finding as confirmed in other previous studies ( Deh et al., 2013, Ajayi & Anyidoho, 2017; Agyemang et al., 2020) point to females perceiving more barriers to venture into entrepreneurship than males. However, there is a disagreement in the literature because previous studies had reported that Ghanaian females are more likely than males to be new entrepreneurs ( Xavier et al. 2012). Some studies (e.g., Ajayi & Anyidoho, 2017; Reynolds et al. 2003) have explained an obvious contradiction between female entrepreneurial aspirations and their actual participation in entrepreneurship. These studies have it that women become entrepreneurs because they are necessitated by issues such as lack of employment opportunities or lack of flexibility with the opportunities available – flexibility to take on other roles simultaneously like child and family care, whereas men turn to entrepreneurship due to the availability of opportunities they take can advantage of.

This study revealed that despite the expression of general satisfaction with their education, some of the graduates called for more attachment and internship opportunities (43%). Invariably, there have been persistent calls for more industry collaboration with educational institutions not just for research and course content support but for student support in terms of attachments and internships ( Donkoh et al., 2021; Mensah & Gordon, 2020). This may to some extent resolve the issue of mismatch between the training of graduates and industry competency needs as there will be direct input from industry into students’ training, thus, the acquisition of employer-relevant competencies. Students will in addition acquire the necessary industry experience while still in training as a foot in the door for graduates into the labour market. However, Mensah and Gordon (2020) noted that though strides have been made with regards to students’ internship placements by tertiary institutions, there are still some major constraints and barriers that hinder these academia and industry partnerships. It must be noted that as a requirement for graduation in most tertiary institutions, students need to complete at least a semester of industrial internship, probably this is not enough as requested by the graduates in this study. However, on their own some students also do continue such internships after satisfying the mandatory requirement. Again, the call for more internship by these graduates was not to help them gain skills to stand on their own, but to gain skills which they believed can make them employable, not for them to set themselves up. The split between the graduates in this study calling for more career and job fairs by the institutions and the alleged nonattendance of such fairs organized by the career and counselling units of most of the tertiary institutions is something worth noting. Could it be that the institutions do not publicize such fairs, or it is just the students being apathetic to the programs or both? Though such fairs are grounds for students to expand their networks but they are mostly geared towards organizations fishing out for best students, with a few finding opportunities to set students up on their own.

The study concludes that though the graduates were satisfied with their education, yet they wished they had received more practical hands-on training in addition, and more career and job fairs, however, none of these desires were to help them set themselves up but rather to help them to be employed by someone else, therefore, the need to re-look at the entrepreneurship modules being run by the tertiary institutions in Ghana. The findings have several implications, for researchers, it would be interesting for future studies to analyse the actual graduate outcomes after their national service using either cross-sectional designs or most importantly longitudinal approach in Ghana or sub-Saharan African region. Policy makers should reassess whether the freeze on governmental employment achieved the goal intended and come up with innovative policies on funding, entrepreneurial training or apprenticeships and ease off some of the perceived blocks to aid young graduates pursue their entrepreneurial dreams and finally, educational managers and stakeholders can set up entrepreneurial funding competitions among undergraduate students across the levels at regular intervals to help encourage graduate entrepreneurship.