Administrators’ Utilization of Artificial Intelligence in Managing Entrepreneurship Education in Public Universities in Cross River State, Nigeria

This study investigated administrators’ utilization of artificial intelligence in managing entrepreneurship education in public universities in Cross River State, Nigeria. Four research questions were raised to direct the study and a descriptive survey design was adopted because data were collected from all 159 institutional administrators in the two public universities in Cross River State: The University of Calabar and Cross River State University. A census approach was used to select the population since the number of administrators was manageable. The researchers used a 24-item validated instrument called the “Utilization of Artificial Intelligence in Entrepreneurship Education Questionnaire (UAIEEQ)” to collect the data. The instrument was validated, and its reliability was established using Cronbach’s alpha, which yielded a coefficient of 0.87, considered good enough for data collection. Finding revealed that the current level of AI awareness and usage among administrators is very low, with most unaware of and rarely exploring opportunities for leveraging AI to strengthen entrepreneurship education. The result also indicated that administrators are currently making some use of certain AI applications and platforms for managing administrative tasks but not fully leveraging their capabilities. The results equally suggest that the adoption of AI has not significantly influenced administrative efficiency within entrepreneurship programs in the domains of time management, cost reduction and data-driven decision making. The finding also revealed that the key perceived drawbacks center around AI’s limitations, integration difficulties, and issues of trust, privacy, reliability and cost from administrators’ viewpoints. It was concluded and recommended that the government should provide comprehensive training programmes to equip the institutional administrators with the knowledge and skills to effectively integrate AI-powered tools and technologies in managing entrepreneurship education.

  Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Entrepreneurship education, University administration Management, Higher education