Abstract:
This study was carried out to determine the entrepreneurial skill training needs of Business Education graduates of Colleges of Education for self–employment in Nasarawa State. The study adopted survey research design to carry out this study. Five research questions and five hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population for the study consists of 112 respondents made up of 49 graduates and 63 entrepreneurs. Since the population was sizeable, there was no sampling. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire named Skill Training Needs of Business Education Graduates Questionnaire (STNBEGQ) which was face- validated by three experts from the Department of Business Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The questionnaire was structured on a bipolar scale of expressed importance and level of performance and it contained 46 items. To determine the internal consistency of the instrument, Cronbach Alpha method was used and a reliability coefficient of 0.87 for expressed importance, and a reliability coefficient of 0.89 for level of performance were obtained. Mean and Training Need Index (TNI) were employed to analyze data for answering the research questions, while t-test statistic was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance with the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The findings revealed that business education graduates needed creative thinking skills, managerial skills, interpersonal communication skills, problem–solving skills, and decision–making skills. No significant difference was found between the mean responses of entrepreneurs and graduates in all the entrepreneurial skill training needs identified except managerial skills training needs that have a significance difference between the mean responses of entrepreneurs and graduates. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that government through the National Commission for Colleges of Education should set up special grants for regular training and retraining of business education graduates to prepare them for self–employment opportunities.
