Asuquo Austin Effiong^1,, Agboola Bolapeju Mary¹

This study examines Nigerian Universities outputs and their employability in the labour market in South-South, Nigeria. The descriptive design of expost facto type was used and the study population comprised Nigerian Universities graduates in both private and public establishments in South-South, Nigeria. Researcher developed questionnaire tagged “Universities Outputs and their Employability Questionnaire” which was validated by two independent experts in Test and Measurement and was used in data collection. Reliability of this instrument was tested and Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.89 was obtained. Multi-stage sampling was used to select sample of 1200 UNiversities graduates, 600 from private and 600 from public establishments in South-South, Nigeria. Frequencies and percentages were used to analyse the demographics of these employers while both one sample t-test and independent t-test were used to test research hypotheses at 0.05 level of significant. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20.0) was used to enhance data analysis. Result showed that the employability of Nigerian Universities outputs based on the responses of their employers who rated them was significantly below average. This result was indifference in spite of differences respondents’ sex, organisation type, educational qualification and age. Hence, management of University education in Nigeria should collaborate with the employers of labour in designing the university curriculum. Also, a more robust and proactive steps should be taken by Nigerian government to improve the existing industrial training programme and other programme channeled towards enhancing the employability of Universities outputs in South- South and in Nigeria at large.

graduate employability, university outputs, unemployment