An Assessment of Business Competencies Needed by Business Education Students for Entrepreneurial Development in Nigeria

The paper examined the business competencies required by business education students for entrepreneurial development in Nigeria. To achieve the objective, two research questions and two hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. Survey design was adopted for the study. The population comprised 6002 business education students. Six hundred (600) students were selected through satisfied sampling techniques and were used for the study. A structured questionnaire was developed by the researchers. The questionnaire was face-validated by three experts in the Departments of Business and science Education of Ebonyi State University. The internal consistency of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha correlation coefficient and it yielded an index of 0.95. Mean , standard deviation and t-test were used to analyze the data. The study revealed that business education students required management and marketing competencies to function well in the business environment. It was concluded that there was need to put in place the learning facilities that will help the business education students to acquire the competencies stated in the study. It was recommended that each institution training Business Education students for entrepreneurial development should have well qualified training personnel who are well groomed in instilling management and marketing competencies in students. Keywords: Assessment, Business competencies, Entrepreneurial development, Nigeria.