COMMERCIALIZATION OF BUSINESS SKILLS AND IT ROLE IN FOSTERING HIGH STANDARD OF LIVING AMONG POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS OF BUSINESS EDUCATION IN OGUN STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated commercialization of business skills and its role in fostering high standard of living among postgraduate students of Business Education in Ogun State of Nigeria. Two research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. A survey research design was used to achieve the purpose of the study. A stratified random sampling procedure was adopted in selecting 250 postgraduate students from Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) and Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), comprising of Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE), Master of Education (M.Ed), Mphil and PhD respectively. 150 postgraduate students of business education were randomly selected from OOU representing 60% of the entire sample size while 40% were selected from TASUED. Self-developed structured questionnaire titled Commercialization of Business Education Skills and High Standard of Living Questionnaire was used for data collection with a reliability coefficient value of 0.86. Descriptive statistics of mean and standard deviation were utilized for answering research question 1 while research question 2 were answered and hypothesis were tested using multiple regression analysis. The findings of the study revealed that skills on new product development, new ways of doing business, protecting document with codes and passwords, access to e-mail, effective decision-making, excel, curious to change, recognizing investment opportunities, access new technologies and resources and value to customers’ satisfaction were among the business skills needed by the postgraduate students of business education to improve their standard of living in Ogun State of Nigeria. The independent variables were found to be significant and strongly influence dependent variable (high standard of living) (β = .161, t = 3.356, p<.05). This also implied that about 16.1% improvement in standard of living could be attributed toward commercialization of business education skills. It was also revealed that there was significant composite contribution of the independent variables (commercialization of business education skills) on the dependent variable (standard of living); R = 0.648, p< .05. The authors recommended among others that there is need for state to partner with some established skill acquisition centres where students are getting to be taken time to time for practical learning before their graduation to help improve their innovative, critical thinking and digital skills.