SOFT SKILLS ACQUISITION AMONG BUSINESS EDUCATORS: A PANACEA FOR E-WORLD RELEVANCE IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH EAST NIGERIA

Abstract

The study was aimed at determining the soft skills acquisition among business educators as a panacea for e-world relevance in public universities in South East, Nigeria. Two research questions guided the study while two null hypotheses were tested at p < 0.05 level of significance. Survey research design was adopted for the study. The population for the study consisted of the entire 75 business educators drawn from the eight universities that offers business education programme in South East Nigeria. The instrument for data collection for the study was a 27 item structured questionnaire titled: Soft Skills Acquisition among Business Educators Questionnaire (SSABEQ). The reliability of the instrument was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha reliability method. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for answering the research questions while t-test was used for testing the null hypotheses. The study found out that communication skills, teamwork, leadership skills critical thinking among others were soft skills that must be acquire by business educators. Similarly the study found out that insufficient period of exercise; poor funding of education; large class size, insufficient self development by business educators; unwillingness to embrace change; fear of job lose among business educators and inadequate collaboration with foreign colleagues are constraints faced in the acquisition of soft skills. The study recommended that business educators should embrace soft skills as part of skills they must possess to be able to deliver efficiently and effectively in this e- world era. Business educators should anticipate new skills and skills change and adopt them as soon as they emerge so as to be up-to-date with the latest trends in education; business educators should be self motivated, academically focused and at the same time create sufficient time for personal development on the latest skills for efficient service delivery. Business educators should endeavour to undergo self/personal training on soft skill so as to transfer it on their students among others

Keywords: Skills, Soft Skills, Business Educator, E world.