BUSINESS EDUCATION, RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT AND KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY
Keywords:
Business Education, Knowledge-Based Economy, Research Development, Postgraduate Students, Public UniversitiesAbstract
The study examined how business education and research development influence knowledge-based economy. Two research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. A quantitative survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study included the entire academic staff and postgraduate students of public (federal and state) universities. A total of four universities comprising one federal and three state owned universities were selected through the stratified random sampling technique. These universities were among those that offer Business Education Programme as an academic discipline. A total of 665 (62 academic staff and 603 postgraduate students) were selected purposively cutting across all the selected universities. A self-developed structure questionnaire titled: Business Education, Research Development and Knowledge-Based Economy Questionnaire with 0.79 as reliability coefficient was used for data collection. Descriptive statistics (mean) with the aid of pie-chart was adopted in answering research questions. Research hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient while hypothesis 3 was tested using multiple regression analyses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed that knowledge-based economy in Nigeria was still at lower level and that factors such as inadequate capacity for innovation, low level of quality of scientific research, poor funding for research development, inadequate commercialization of research outputs, poor investment in education, neglect of local policy in favour of foreign policy and weak institutional framework were among the causative factors that affected knowledge-based economy in South-West, Nigeria. The findings also indicated that there was significant relationship between business education (r = 0.007, p<.05), research development (r = 0.022, p<.05) and knowledge-based economy in South-West, Nigeria. It further showed that about 12% of the variance in knowledge-based economy was accounted for by the linear combination of the business education and research development. The study recommended among other that University management and administrators in alliance with all other relevant stakeholders in education should endeavour to focus more on business education programme as an academic discipline that trained its recipients for knowledge, skill and entrepreneurial development which could be in a better position to promote knowledge-based economy in long run. There should be improvement in university-industry collaboration to commercialize research outputs for further innovation gain.
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