Acquisition of Entrepreneurial Skills and Employment Generation of Business Education Graduates in Public Universities, South-south Nigeria

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to determine the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills and 
employment generation of Business Education Graduates in public Universities, South-South 
Nigeria. Three questions were answered and three null hypotheses were tested at .05 level of 
significance. The study adopted descriptive survey design. The population of this study 
comprised all the 352 post-graduates’ students, M.Sc and PhD from two successive academic 
sessions (2021/2022, 2022/2023) from Public Universities (Federal and State) South-South, 
Nigeria that studied business education. The sample size was 352 respondents from the public 
universities selected. Purposive sampling technique was adopted for this study. The 
instruments for gathering data were researcher-developed questionnaire captioned 
“Acquisition of Entrepreneurial Skills Questionnaire (AESQ)” and Employment Generation of 
Business Education Graduates Questionnaire (EGBEGQ. The 42 structured items were drawn 
from all the clusters of the independent variables and 10 structured items for the dependent 
variable.  The instruments were face-validated, and Cronbach’s Alpha reliability statistics was 
utilized to determine the internal consistency of the instruments where reliability coefficient 
index of .78 and .92 were obtained respectively. The distribution of the questionnaire was 
carried out by the researcher with the help of two research assistants in order to achieve high 
rate of return.  Simple Linear Regression analysis was used to answer research questions as 
well as testing the research hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance using Statistical Package 
for Social Science (SPSS). The findings of the study indicated that there is great and significant 
extent to which acquisition of creativity, risk taking, strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, 
time management, innovation, and critical thinking skills predict employment generation of 
business education graduates in public Universities, South-South, Nigeria. Based on the 
findings of the study, it was recommended among others that the management of public 
universities should ensure that acquisition of entrepreneurial skills is practicalized by students 
beginning from the time of compulsory entrepreneurial studies course.