UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS FOR ACHIEVING DECENT EMPLOYMENT IN RIVERS STATE

Educational Management

The study investigated University-industry partnerships as a tool for achieving decent employment in Rivers State. Three research questions were answered and three hypotheses tested in the study. Descriptive survey design was employed in the study. The population of the study was all 2,849 lecturers in the three public Universities in Rivers State and all employers in the private sector in Rivers State. There were 351 lecturers and 384 employers sampled for the study using convenience sampling technique which totaled 735 sampled respondents. Instrument used for data collection was a 15 item questionnaire titled “University-Industry Partnerships for Decent Employment Questionnaire” (UIPDEQ) which was face and content validated by three Measurement and Evaluation experts in the Department of Educational Psychology, Guidance and Counselling, University of Port Harcourt. Cronbach alpha was used to estimate the reliability of the questionnaire and it produced an index of 0.84. All the questionnaires were administered and recovered appropriately due to the ease of sampling. Research questions raised were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using z-test at 0.05 level of significance. The result of the study showed that management system and level of mutual reward were the major determinants of University industry partnerships. It was also revealed that this partnership can promote job mobility and business startup. However, challenges identified included lack of funding, inadequate technology and so on. The study recommended the need for regular stakeholders’ engagement between the University and captains of industry for the achievement of decent employment.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.