Self-Rating on Acquired Soft Skills for Success in Small Business Operation by Postgraduate Business Education Students in South East, Nigeria

Abstract

The study on self-rating on acquired soft skills for success in small business operation by postgraduate business education students in South East, Nigeria was necessitated by the need to ensure that graduate of the programme in the area acquire relevant skills that will motivate them to start their business operations and succeed. Two research questions guided the study and four null hypotheses were tested. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population consisted of all 198 postgraduate business education students in universities in South East, Nigeria. The entire population was studied without sampling because the size was not too large. The instrument for data collection was five-point rating scale questionnaire which contained 21-items in two clusters.
The instrument was validated by three experts. Internal consistency method with Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the reliability of the instrument values of 0.86 and 0.83 were obtained for the clusters with an overall coefficient value of 0.85. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and determine the homogeneity of the respondents’ ratings while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.
The findings of the study revealed that only managerial skills were much acquired by Postgraduate Business Education students, while their acquired innovative as moderate. Gender significantly influenced the respondents’ mean ratings on their acquired soft skills but type of the programme did not.
Based on the findings, it was concluded that, the level of soft skills acquired by the postgraduate business education students is inadequate to guarantee their success in small business operation in South East, Nigeria. It was, therefore recommended among others that, university administration in the area of study should mandate postgraduate business education students to develop a viable business plan before graduation as to assess their skills in creating jobs for themselves upon graduation.