FACILITY UTILIZATION AND EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS ACQUISITION AMONG UNDERGRADUATES OF BUSINESS EDUCATION IN OYO STATE

ABSTRACT The study examined facility utilization and employability skills acquisition among graduates of Business Education in Oyo State. To achieve the major objectives of the study, six null hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Relevant literatures were reviewed on the study. Eight hundred (800) final year Business Education students from four tertiary institutions in Oyo State constituted the population of the study. A sample of 400 respondents was drawn from the population using purposive, stratified and simple random sampling techniques. The study adopted descriptive s survey design. Questionnaire research instrument titled “Facility Utilization and Students’ Employability Skill Acquisition Questionnaire (FUSESAQ)” was used for data collection. The instrument was face and content validated by three experts and a reliability estimate ranging from 0.77 –0.88 was established using Cronbach Alpha reliability method. The data generated from fieldwork were statistically analyzed using simple linear regression and population t-test. All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that the utilization of infrastructural, instructional, library and information communication technology facilities had a significant joint influence on students’ employability skill acquisition in Business Education. Based on these findings, it was recommended amongst others that Nigerian University Commission, National Board for Technical Education and National Commission for Colleges of Education should set facility utilization standard and also strengthen their monitoring and evaluation team to ensure effective utilization of library facilities by both lecturers and students to improve their employability skills relevant in the competitive labour market.