ASSESSING BENEFICIARIES OF TERTIARY EDUCATION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL EMANCIPATION OF OYO STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Tertiary education serves as eye opener, helps in the development of latent skills, discovery of self, development of initiatives of beneficiaries, innovations and global competiveness in the world of work. The benefits of tertiary education are far beyond the individual beneficiaries to the state, nation and the world at large. This study assessed the impact of beneficiaries of tertiary education towards the management of socio-economic and political emancipation in Oyo State. The design adopted was descriptive survey. The entire 33 local governments in Oyo State formed the total population. Stratified sampling technique was used to group the local governments into three, based on senatorial district. Five of the local governments were chosen from Ogbomoso zone, four local governments from Oyo zone and Oke-ogun zone respectively using stratified sampling technique.
The purposive sampling technique was used to select 180 civil servants who had tertiary education. A total of 900 respondents were used. Questionnaire which consisted of forty statements and tagged “Assessing Beneficiaries of Tertiary Education Questionnaire” (ABTEQ) was used. The research instrument was tested through test-re-test method and reliability index of 0.78 was obtained. Simple percentage Analysis was used to answer the three research questions. Findings revealed that there was significant relationship between the impact of beneficiaries of tertiary education and management of political emancipation Averagely, 73% respondents supported the option), management of socio emancipation (Averagely, 78% respondents supported the option) and management of economic emancipation (Averagely, 72% respondents supported the option). The paper recommended among others, that tertiary education should be made compulsory for all qualified citizens of the state, tertiary institutions should change the orientation of their students from job seeking to job creation through necessary modification in their curricular and method of instruction and that tertiary institution should ensure the political participation in Student Union Government is inclusive of all students and the union must serve as a model of exemplary government even to the larger society.