CAPACITY BUILDING NEEDS OF BUSINESS EDUCATION LECTURERS FOR PROFESSIONALISM IN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTH EAST NIGERIA

Abstract

The study assessed the capacity building needs of business education lecturers for professionalism in public universities in South East, Nigeria.  It adopts the descriptive survey design. Three research questions and three hypotheses tested at .05 level of significance were used. Population consisted of 147 Business Educators in public universities in South East, Nigeria. No sample was used because the population is not large. The instrument was validated by experts in business education and measurement and evaluation from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike. Test-re-test method was used to ascertain the reliability of the instrument with coefficients of 0.82 was obtained using pearson product moment correlation coefficient. A four point response type of Strongly Agreed, Agreed, Strongly Disagreed and Disagreed with three sections and 36 items were used. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypotheses.  Findings of the study revealed that capacity building needs of Business Education lecturers for professionalism focus on Iinformation and Communication Technology (ICT), entrepreneurial and managerial competencies. The findings of the study further showed that there is no significant difference between the mean ratings of male and female business education lecturers on their capacity building needs in ICT, entrepreneurial and managerial competencies. Based on the findings, it was concluded that Business Education Lecturers need ICT competencies, Managerial and Entrepreneurial competencies for professionalism in the public universities and therefore should be encouraged.  It was recommended among others that government should organize workshops, seminars and in service training to update business education lecturers on ICT, managerial and entrepreneurial competencies for professionalism in public universities in South East, Nigeria.

Keywords:     Capacity building, Business Education, Professionalism, Public                   universities, ICT, Entrepreneurship and managerial competencies