Skills Building in Business Education for National Development

Abstract

The study examined the extent to which business education programme could predict national development in Nigeria. Four research questions were answered for the study. A descriptive survey research design was used. The population of the study comprised 1,926 Business Education undergraduate students for the academic session 2019/2020. Using stratified random sampling technique, a total of 250 business education undergraduate students were selected as study sample size. This represents 13% of the population figure. Researchers Instrument tagged Business Education and National Development Questionnaire (BENDQ) with 0.853 as reliability coefficient was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were used to answer research questions 1 and 4. Research 2 and 3 were answered using PPMC. Decisions were made at .05 significance level. The findings revealed that business education programme to certain extent has promotes skills building for rational decisions in the business world, creativity skills and knowledge for effective management of business operations, innovation that promote proficiency in operating business activities, increase in size of labour force, creation of economic awareness, promotion of students’ career development, embedded appropriate work habits and social values and Improvement in entrepreneurship spirit. It was also observed that business education programme directly impact employment generation (r = 0.622, p<.05) and improved standard of living (r = 0.85, p<.05). Inadequate qualified business education lecturers, inadequate funding, shortage of needed materials and facilities, inadequate welfare package for staff (academic and non-academic), lopsided society perception of business education programme and poor nature of digital tools and technology usage were among the challenges confronting business education programme in national development. It was recommended that the government through university authority should recruited qualified personnel into the business education department to effectively implement the curriculum towards national development in Nigeria.