ABSTRACT
The study investigated perception of Employers
of the quality of employed Nigeria tertiary graduates in Warri metropolitan
Area of Delta State. The
study sample population was made up of 120 respondents who were all heads of
private or public organisations. A total of seven (5) research questions were
raised out of which four (1) was answered and the other four (4) questions were
hypothesised. Consequently, four (4) hypotheses were raised and analysed. The
study found that: Employers of labour in both private and public
sectors of the economy in Warri metropolis of Delta State rated the performance
of graduates of tertiary education to be fairly good; the study also found that there was there was no
significant difference between
observed graduates skills and employers expectation; another finding of the study was that there was no
significant difference in graduates’
skills for male and female graduates; there
was difference the job performance of graduates trained in part-time
and full-time programmes; another finding of the study was that there was difference
in the perception of private and public employers of the quality of
graduates. Based on the data analysed and findings of the study,
the researcher concluded graduates skills were fairly good but training may be
required to meet specific organisational needs. The researcher also concluded
that males and females perform equally on their jobs while it is upheld that
graduates in part-time and full-time programmes have differential performance
on their jobs. And that because of
the specific needs of private and public organizations, their perception of
tertiary graduates differed.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
Title page i
Certification ii
Dedication iii
Acknowledgement iv
Abstract vi
Table of Contents viii
CHAPTER
ONE: INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study 1
Statement of Problem 6
Research Questions 8
Hypotheses 9
Purpose of Study 9
Significance of the Study 10
Assumptions 12
Scope and Delimitation of Study 12
Definition of Terms 13
CHAPTER
TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
The Concept of Higher Education 15
Quality 17
Graduates’ quality and Higher
Education 21
Employers’ Perception of Quality 25
Employers’ Needs/Expectations 28
Relationship between Graduates’ Quality and
Employers’
Perception 32
Graduates’ Quality in Part-time
and Full-time Graduates 33
Ensuring Quality/High Quality 41
Employability 45
CHAPTER
THREE: METHOD OF STUDY
Research Design 50
Population 51
Sample and Sampling Technique 51
Instrumentation 52
Validation 53
Method of Data Collection and Analysis 54
CHAPTER FOUR: DATA ANALYSES, PRESENTATION,
INTERPRETATION AND
DISCUSSION
Response Rate 55
Data Analysis 56
Analysis of Research Questions 57
Analysis of Hypotheses 58
Discussion of Findings 62
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary of the Research Findings 70
Conclusion 71
Recommendations 72
References 73
Appendix 79
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the study
A major problem in
Nigeria today is the unemployment of tertiary graduates. There are thousands of
students that graduate every year from various tertiary institutions with
good/honorary degrees; yet without employment. According to the National Bureau
of Statistics (NBS) (2010), unemployment in Nigeria is running at around 19.7
percent on average… and almost half of 15-24 year olds living in urban areas
are jobless. The secondary-school graduates was said to consist of the
principal fraction of the unemployed, accounting for nearly 35% to 50%; 40% for
age group within 20 to 24years and 31% for 15 to 19 years. As imperfect as this statistics may be, it’s
still does not tell a good story.
At a seminar with the
theme: Youth, Employment Creation and Shared Growth in Africa held at the just
concluded African Development Bank (AfDB’s) annual meetings in Lisbon,
Portugal, Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana,
noted that most of the things students are thought in schools today is quite
different from what is needed in the labour market.
The rate of development
in Nigeria has been on a very slow pace because of this. This slow development
has been as a result of the low rate of production. And the low rate of
production has been adduced to the incompetence of recent tertiary graduates.
Questions have arisen as to why the case is like this. Some adduced reasons
were that:
There are three major
challenges currently facing the education sector in the country which
apparently are the reason for the poor performance of the sub-sector. These
challenges include: incessant lecturers strike resulting in massive brain
drain, lack of teaching facilities in schools and poor funding.
- there
are not enough vacancies to match the large number of graduates
- graduates’ specialization do not
correspond with organizational needs in Nigeria
- the graduates are technically
incompetent/of low quality. The author
further emphasised that the president stressed the need for universities to
focus attention to courses that could make graduates, creators of jobs rather
than joining the pool of unemployed youths in the labour market, saying
"We now need graduates who are problem-solvers and job creators, and whose
characters will be enviable and unimpeachable at all times." This study is
basically concerned with the last adduced reason.
It is said that
employers complain that these graduates are poorly prepared for work. They
believe that academic standard has fallen over the past decades and that their
degrees are no longer a guarantee of communication skills or technical
competence. The essence of this project therefore is to determine if these
tertiary graduates are meeting the expectations of their employers or not.
According to Andrew et.al (2000) a large
mismatch appears to exist between university output and labor market demand.
Their findings showed
that the employment prospects of recent graduates have recently deteriorated.
This is due to the weak Nigerian economy, the policy environment and inadequate
level of skilled human resources, especially the quality of the tertiary
trained portion of the workforce. The claim is that employers are not satisfied
with the quality of graduates produced by the tertiary institutions and that
they always have to retrain them before they become useful to their companies.
So this project sets out to determine if the quality of tertiary graduates is
as low as claimed or high. This deteriorating quality perception is supported
by results from empirical research.
There is a reported a
lower rating on the "reputation" of first generation Nigerian
university graduates. They expressed a belief that the quality of university
education has fallen. Studies by several researchers show that those who
graduated in the 1980s gave more favorable ratings to questions regarding
availability of study resources than those who graduated in the 1990s. This
goes to show that study materials are lacking for the recent generation of
graduates.
Many scholars have found
that graduates of Nigerian universities rated supervised practical work and
quality of academic advice received as very poor.
A casual
interview of graduates in engineering, management and the sciences show that
only few find most of the theories they learn in schools applicable in their
daily work. In particular, graduates rated the practical aspects of their
education very poorly. If this is so, it means the school syllabus is obsolete.
The
present Nigeria graduate is a direct product of our society, a reflection of
the decay and a mirror image of the loss of morals and values. These
findings illustrate the wide gap that exists between what is taught in the
universities and what the world of work requires. Stakeholders believe that it is the responsibility of our educational system
to provide graduates with the background and skills necessary to be successful
in their chosen fields of endeavor.
For this reason, when employers recruit
graduates, they look for graduates from institutions with curricula that use
new technology and emphasize current practices. One of the means to this end is
a serious academic research orientation among the academic staffs in Nigerian
institutions of higher learning. It is also a known fact that Nigerian public
institutions have high enrolments without enough qualified instructors.
Although
most employers are unhappy with the quality of graduates Nigerian tertiary
institutions have turned out in recent times. They are well aware of the
causes. Many employers are quick to state that the quality of these graduates
is simply a reflection of the quality of academic staff, learning resources
(libraries, laboratories, etc.) and funding limitations. A solution to the
problems of staff quality is critical to any improvement in the quality of
university graduates. The decline of staff quality is reflected in high rates
of "brain drain," the declining numbers of professors and assistant
professors within the university system and their falling levels of
post-graduate preparation. Andrew, et al. (2000) views the financial stability
of the universities as tied to the fiscal fortunes of the state.
In the last two decades the federal budget has not
been stable. It is tied closely to oil revenues, which have been unstable. The
consequences of unstable funding are reflected in poorly-equipped laboratories,
out-dated libraries, poorly- remunerated staff, crumbling academic facilities,
and low research output. And these are the things that will build the quality
of the graduates, positively or negatively.
Statement
of Problem
The
quality of tertiary institutions’ graduates has been called to question
severally by politicians, educational stakeholders and employers of labour (who
also are the end users of the graduates’ services). There are reports that federal government
would soon establish a special mechanism to rate each university in the country
based on the quality of their products, particularly in terms of the quality of
their graduates and outputs.
Experts in the educational sub-sector have
blamed the high dependence of the industrial sector on low technical expertise
and high rate of unemployment bedeviling the nation’s economy on the inability
of Nigeria’s polytechnics and other tertiary institutions to produce the
much-required technical manpower in the sub-sector sector. The complaint is
that graduates performances are of low quality due to their low technical
competence and therefore they don’t measure up with employer’s expectations.
Many therefore see an urgent need
for institutions to be more active to their responsibilities in terms of
reaching out to industries that will meet their requirements so that graduates
from the nation’s universities and polytechnics will be efficiently utilized by
the industrial sector.
In the light of the fore going,
experts have advocated a total overhauling of Nigeria’s education system.
According to them, if success must be achieved in this regards, it must
undertake some major tasks like acquiring and adapting global knowledge and
creating knowledge locally. All these point to quality. Similarly, by investing
in human capital to boost capacity to absorb and use knowledge and by investing
in technologies to facilitate both acquisition and the absorption of knowledge.
There is need to find out what
factors make up this quality and either affirm or negate the complaint. Their
quality depends largely on the type of training given to them. If they are
poorly trained, they will be of low quality but if given adequate training,
they will be of high quality.
Research Questions
In order
to effectively carry out this research, the questions below were raised by the
researcher:
I.
What is the perception of the quality of tertiary
graduates by employers of labour in Warri, Delta State?
II.
Is there any difference between observed graduates
skills and employers expectation in Warri, Delta State?
III.
Is there any difference between the observed
graduates skills and employers expectation for male and female graduates in
Warri, Delta State?
IV.
Is there any difference in the perception of
employers of the quality of graduates trained in part-time and full-time
programmes in Warri, Delta State?
V.
Is there any difference between private and public
employers’ observed and expected perception of the quality of tertiary
graduates by employers of labour in Warri, Delta State?
Hypotheses
Research
questions I was answered while the following hypotheses were raised to guide
research questions II –V study by the researcher:
I. There is
no significant difference between employers’ observed and expected frequency of
opinion of graduates’ skills and in Warri, Delta State.
II. There is no significant difference between the
observed graduates skills and employers expectation for male and female
graduates in Warri, Delta State.
III. There is no significant difference in
the perception of employers of the quality of graduates trained in part-time
and full-time programmes in Warri, Delta State.
IV. There is
no significant difference between private and public employers’ observed and
expected perception of the quality of tertiary graduates in Warri, Delta State.
Purpose of Study
The objective of this project is
to ascertain if tertiary graduates are performing well (of high quality) or
really poorly prepared for the field of work (of low quality) as claimed. This
can only be done through the employers of these graduates. There is need to see
how employers rate their attitudes, initiative, innovation, behavior and total
performance on the job. In ascertaining this, the focus will be on:
1.
Determining
the quality of graduates and its effect on their performance
2.
Determining if graduates’ quality meet employers
expectations.
3.
Determining if tertiary trainings corresponds with
organizational needs and employers expectations.
4.
Improving productivity and development in the
country.
Significance
of the Study
The importance of this study
cannot be overemphasized, seeing that it has so much to do with the graduates
who will determine the rate of development of the country. Since Harbison (1973) said they are the ones
who constitute the ultimate basis for the wealth of the nation.
This study is therefore concerned
with determining the quality of tertiary graduates. This can be determined by
the perceptions of their employers which will help to decide if the given
training is adequate or not. After all,
it is the users of a product that can tell whether it is good or not. So the
employers of these graduates who are the users, are in a better position to
tell whether they are adequately trained or not. If they are of low quality, we
will be able to determine why this is so from their responses and proffer ways
of improving them.
The findings of this research
will help to determine how correct it is to say that tertiary graduates are
either of low or high quality. If low, findings will help to determine areas
where they are low and put the institutions at alert.
Whether the quality is high or low, findings
from the suggested ways of improvement from the employers will definitely yield
novel information that will help the tertiary institutions determine ways of
improving the academic/practical quality of the institutions.
Furthermore, findings here will
help to determine how to improve the on-coming graduates. This improvement will
lead to increase in the rate of employment and production, which will further
lead to the development of the country. It follows therefore that this study
will be of help to the under graduate students, graduated students, employers,
tertiary institutions and the country at large.
Assumptions
Some assumptions are believed to answer the “whys”
of graduates’ low employment rate and the slow development of the country. They
are:
·
That tertiary graduates are not competent in their
areas of specialization because they are poorly trained and of low quality
·
That these employers are not satisfied with the quality of
graduates produced by the tertiary institutions and that they always have to
retrain them before they become useful to their companies.
·
It is assumed that graduates’ skills don’t meet employers’
expectations on the job.
·
That graduates are trained in areas that are not relevant to
organizational needs.
Scope and
Delimitation of Study
The issue of unemployment of tertiary graduates
spans through the whole states in Nigeria. And reasons have been based on their
quality. This study centers on all tertiary graduates that have been employed,
to determine their quality. The Warri axis of the Delta state region has been
used for this study, to find out the perception of employers concerning these
tertiary graduates. The study is delimited to Udu LGA, Warri South LGA and
Uvwie LGA as these are the major areas of employment in Warri. The study covers
all fields of work that are employers of tertiary graduates.
The use of Warri for this study
is to give an insight to employers’ rating of tertiary graduates in Nigeria.
Their perception will be used to determine whether the quality of these
graduates is high or low. And if it is low, determine how to improve on it.
Definition
of Terms:
The following terms were used in
the study and were explained as used in the study to enhance understanding of
the readers.
Quality: is the
measuring of graduates’ outputs against inputs to determine effectiveness and
efficiency. It also referred to the performance Level. It is also used in this
study to mean readiness for work.
High
quality: refers to graduates who are technically competent in their areas of
specialization and are performing well with high level of performance on the
job.
Low
quality: refers to graduates who are incompetent and whose performance are below
par on the job.
Tertiary
graduates: refer to those who have completed the normal years
of training for their undertaken course in polytechnics, universities and
colleges of education respectively; and were awarded certificates to that
effect; including graduates of other forms of education higher than the secondary.
Unemployment:
refers to
the absence of jobs to those who are suitable and qualified for it.
Educational
standards: pre-determined minimum requirements for the operation of educational
activities as contained in educational policies and programmes.
Place of
training: refers to the location where the graduate acquired his/her training
which could be in a rural or urban area.
Mode of
training: implies the acquisition of training through a part-time or a full-time
programme of any tertiary institution.
Urban
tertiary institutions: tertiary schools located in places very proximate
or within the state capitals of the host states.
Rural
tertiary institutions: tertiary schools located in places other than the
state capitals of the host states.
Click “DOWNLOAD NOW” below to get the complete Projects
FOR QUICK HELP CHAT WITH US NOW!
+(234) 0814 780 1594
Login To Comment