IMPLEMENTATION OF BUSINESS EDUCATION COURSE CONTENTS ON SKILL ACQUISITION FOR JOB OPPORTUNITIES IN EDO AND DELTA STATES

ABSTRACT

The study assessed the implementation of business education course contents on skill acquisition for job opportunities in Edo and Delta States. Eight research questions were raised to guide the study and two null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance for the study. The sample of the study was 164 final year business education students out of the 543 students from University of Benin and Ambrose Alli University in Edo State and Delta State University in Delta State using simple proportionate sampling technique. The survey research design was used for this study. Questionnaire was the instrument used for data collection.The instrument used was validated by three experts. Chronbach Alpha method was used to compute reliability of the instrument which yielded a correlation coefficient of 0.79. 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 implementation of business education course content influences students’ requisite skill acquisition for, teaching jobs, administrative job, accounting jobs, entrepreneurial, marketing jobs, computer analyst and Information communication and technology to a high extent while it has low extent influence on internal auditing job in Edo and Delta States. The two groups of business education students (federal & state university and male & female) did not differ significantly in their rating on the implementation of business education course contents on skill acquisition for job opportunities in Edo and Delta States. Consequently, it was recommended that the development and implementation of an industry focused business education curriculum should be a major option for employment generation in Edo State. Students should be enlightened on the various jobs opportunities inherent in business education programme through seminars, symposia and workshops so as to improve their perception towards the programme. Furthermore, business educators should be trained and retrained to apply global best practices in the teaching of business education courses so as to inculcate the required skills on the learners. Finally, recommendations were made for further studies such as determinants influencing students’ skills acquisition in business education programme.