PERCEIVED PRIVATE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION AMONG MALE AND FEMALE UNDERGRADUATES IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA.

Abstract

This study investigated the private economic benefits of university education as perceived by male and female undergraduates in Rivers state, Nigeria. It was a descriptive survey research design, involving a proportionate stratified random sample of 545 students from a population of 10,575 final year students of three federal and state universities in Rivers State, Nigeria. A self-designed questionnaire, properly tested and validated (with reliability co-efficient of 0.84) was used for data generation. The survey data were analysed using mean statistics to address research questions and t-test to test the hypothesis at 0.05% alpha level. The result revealed that male and female undergraduates still perceive university education as having high economic benefit potentials even with rising level of graduate unemployment. Demographic variables, institutional factors and skill/functional ability were found to be major determinants of graduates’ employment. On the other hand, work experience, age, gender and competence of a graduate on the job were found to be the determinants of earnings of university graduates. It was concluded that the over-valuation of university certificates without reference to functional skill development is dangerous to sustainable relevant skilled manpower development for sustainable socio-economic development of the society. The need for universities to strategically refocus their energies on enhancing the relevance of their teaching and researches, achieving high academic integrity of their programmes through quality assurance mechanisms and boosting their institutional reputations as a way of improving the employability of their graduates were recommended.