RESOURCE FACTORS AND SKILLS SUPPLY TO LABOUR MARKETS IN PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHWESTERN NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated resource factors and skills supply to labour markets in private universities in southwestern Nigeria. Skills acquired by graduates are important to economic productivity and economic development. Despite its importance, different stakeholders have been complaining of inadequacy of these skills in university graduates especially among fresh graduates in Nigeria. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. Multi stage sampling procedure was used. At the first stage, purposive sampling technique was used to select 10 private universities that have been in operation for minimum of ten years in Southwestern, Nigeria. At the second stage, simple random sampling technique was used to select 173 Heads of Departments in the sampled faculties. At the third stage, human resource managers in seven firms (Communication, Banking, Education, Health, Judiciary, Manufacturing/Construction and Agricultural) were sampled for the study. The instruments used were Questionnaire on Skills Supplied by Private Universities to Labour Market (= 0.89) and Questionnaire on Resource Factors and Skills Supply in Private Universities (r = 0.81). Statistical tools used were Frequency counts, Pearson product-moment correlation and Multiple regression at 0.05 level of significance. Private universities met the benchmark of National Universities Commissions but about 53.2% of their academic staff were either on part time / adjunct appointment or on sabbatical appointment. There were positive significant relationships between resource factors and skills supply (r=0.201 P<0.05). Resource factors jointly contributed to skills supply by private universities (F(4,18) = 176.07; Adj. R2=0.64), accounting for 64.0% of its variance. Academic staff profile (?=0.55) and availability of ICT (?=0.35) relatively contributed to skills supply by private universities. It was recommended that management of private universities in southwestern Nigeria should increase the number of full-time academic staff and part time teaching staff should be discouraged so as to have more academic staff that will be fully on ground for the attention of students.