COMPETENCIES REQUIRED BY UNIVERSITY BUSINESS EDUCATION GRADUATES FOR EFFECTIVE SELF-EMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH-WEST AND SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA

ABSTRACT

The study assessed the competencies required by university business education graduates for effective self-employment in South-West and South-South Nigeria. Five research questions were raised to guide the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance for the study. The population of the study was 95 postgraduate business education students from University of Benin and Tai Solarin University. There was no sampling as the entire population was used of this study. The descriptive survey research design was used for this study. The instrument used was validated by three experts.Chrobach alphawas used to compute reliability of the instrument which yielded correlation coefficient of 0.73.Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The t-test was used to test the hypotheses. From the results of the analysis, it was discovered that the competencies required by business education graduates for effective self-employment in South-West and South-South Nigeria are management competency, creative competency, marketing competency, accounting competency and information & communication technology competency. Business education graduates (male & female and state & federal) did not differ significantly in their rating on competencies required by them for effective self-employment. Consequently, it was recommended that regulatory bodies such as National Universities Commission should incorporate these competencies in the curriculum of business education. Effective teaching pedagogy should be utilized in the delivery of these competencies to learners. Furthermore, Government at all levels should increase budgetary spending on education especially on materials and equipment needed for entrepreneurship and business education. Finally, recommendations were made for further studies such as determinants influencing the acquisition of self-employment competencies.