IDENTIFYING OPTIMAL STRATEGIES FOR INTEGRATING EMERGING EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS INTO BUSINESS EDUCATION PROGRAMME IN UNIVERSITIES, IN SOUTH EAST UNIVERSITIES, NIGERIA

This study was carried out to identify optimal strategies for integrating emerging employability skills into business education programme. Two research questions and one null hypothesis guided the study. The study adopted survey research design with a population of144 business education lecturers studied without sampling. The instrument for data collection is a-20 item self-developed questionnaire titled Identifying Optimal Strategies for Integrating Emerging Employability Skills into Business Education Programme (AOSIEES-BEP). Face and content validity of the instrument were ascertained using three experts, two from Business Education and one expert from Measurement and Evaluation. The internal consistency of the instrument was established using trial-test and data collected were calculated with Cronbach Alpha formula which yielded correlation coefficients of .88 and .90 for clusters B1 to B2 with an overall value of.89. The researcher with the help of four research assistants administered the instrument to the respondents in their offices. Out of 144 copies of questionnaire distributed, 134(94%) were correctly filled and returned which was used for data analysis. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and determine the homogeneity of the respondents mean ratings while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that business education lecturer agree that majority of the optimal strategies listed in the study are implemented by business education departments for integrate emerging employability skills into their programme in universities in South East Nigeria, business education lecturers agree that factors listed hinder the implementation of strategies for integrating emerging employability skills into business education programme in South East Nigerian universities.