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Journal of Education in Developing Areas (JEDA) Vol. 19, No. 1. REMODELLING BUSINESS EDUCATION FOR ENHANCED FUNCTIONALITY AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROPULSION IN NIGERIA Professor Dele Joshua OSAHOGULU Professor of Education Management Information Systems/ Director, ICT Centre Rivers State University of Education Rumuolumeni, PMB 5047 Port Harcourt. e-mail: [email protected] Mobile: +234(0) 803 754, 0641 +234(0) 803 706 7515 ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel concept of business education is advanced. It is very strongly hoped that this deliberate redefinition of business education will render it far more functional as an object of human learning, and far more powerful as a driver of development at the hierarchic levels of the individual, the family, the community, the state and the nation in Nigeria. The core hypothetical message of the paper is that if every subject on the pre-tertiary educational curriculum or every course on the academic programme menus in higher education were taught with heavy emphasis on its business utility or entrepreneurial potentials, practically all of the ills of graduate unemployment will vanish in the Nigerian society. (Keywords: business, management, business teacher education, business administrative education, mathematical models).

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Page 1: OSAHOGULU Remodelling Business Education

Journal of Education in Developing Areas (JEDA) Vol. 19, No. 1.

REMODELLING BUSINESS EDUCATION FOR ENHANCED FUNCTIONALITY AND

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

PROPULSION IN NIGERIA

Professor Dele Joshua OSAHOGULU

Professor of Education Management Information Systems/

Director, ICT Centre

Rivers State University of Education

Rumuolumeni, PMB 5047

Port Harcourt.

e-mail: [email protected]

Mobile: +234(0) 803 754, 0641

+234(0) 803 706 7515

ABSTRACT In this paper, a novel concept of business education is advanced. It is very strongly hoped that this deliberate redefinition of business education will render it far more functional as an object of human learning, and far more powerful as a driver of development at the hierarchic levels of the individual, the family, the community, the state and the nation in Nigeria. The core hypothetical message of the paper is that if every subject on the pre-tertiary educational curriculum or every course on the academic programme menus in higher education were taught with heavy emphasis on its business utility or entrepreneurial potentials, practically all of the ills of graduate unemployment will vanish in the Nigerian society. (Keywords: business, management, business teacher education, business administrative education, mathematical models).

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Introduction

The Nigerian society is currently plagued with many perplexing societal ills. Graduate

unemployment, misemployment and underemployment constitute a most frustrating

adverse triplet for educated Nigerian youths who are mainly graduates of tertiary

educational institutions (universities, polytechnics, colleges and institutes). Some

authorities have explained graduate unemployment in Nigeria on account of the

generally unfavourable economic constraints or conditions under which most

business sector organisations have to operate today. Such conditions as the high cost

of quality raw materials, suitably educated and trained labour, reliable power supply,

appropriate productive technologies, marketing of products and services, government

labour/taxation policies (TCNTP, 2008) and social responsibility pressures have

indeed reduced the graduate absorptive capacity of many Nigerian organisations

(Meheux, 2000). Others have blamed graduate unemployment in Nigeria on the gross

mismatch between institutional educational programmes and the knowledge-and-

competency requirements of the available job openings in the contemporary world of

work (Good, 2004). Still others have expressed the fear that graduate unemployment

in Nigeria is one inevitable consequence of the nation’s neglect of really effective

educational planning, which implies the overproduction of graduates in a few

traditional disciplines or fields of learning, and the corresponding relative neglect or

underproduction of graduates in others, some of which are the very ones in high

demand today in modern organisations (Okorosaye-Orubite, 2008). Examples in the

over-emphasized category include English language, economics, political science,

sociology and business management/administration or their respective traditional

variants. Examples in the under-emphasized category include information technology

(IT), computer engineering, computer science, electronic engineering, conflict

resolution and public policy (Artenstein, 2008). A significant number of contributors

too have begun to blame graduate unemployment in Nigeria on the unavailability of

effective occupational/career guidance and counselling services to undergraduates as

one major educational programme support service rendered on a day-to-day basis,

and systematically sustained throughout the duration of every programme on offer.

Infact, the most recent explanatory view on the stubborn issue of graduate/youth

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unemployment in Nigeria is that there is not enough collaboration between higher

educational institutions and the industrial subsector in institutional

research/educational programming (Oyinkari, 2006). However, the academic brilliance

of any of these attempts at explaining graduate/youth unemployment in Nigeria

notwithstanding, the problem cannot be wished away or explained away. If no effective

follow-up action is taken, then not only will it persist, but it will, in fact, expand and

deepen beyond all manageable proportions.

It may seem now that we have so far forgotten to mention the equally troubling

and apparently perpetual state of underdevelopment in Nigeria. Going by the staple

global indices of national development such as income per capita, literacy rate,

proportion of recipients of tertiary education, personal health status, life expectancy,

environmental health/beauty/friendliness, residential housing quality,

industrialization, public/business transparency/ethical standards, crime rate,

technological development, resource commitment to research and development (R &

D), currency strength, drinkable water supply, energy/power supply,

food/nutritional adequacy, healthcare service quality, etc Nigeria can be said even

today to be considerably below fellow African nations like South Africa and Morocco,

to leave out the mention of the far more developed nations like the USA, Canada, UK

and Germany (Aderinoye, 2002; Anatsui, 2008).

But one thing is certain: as the citizens of Nigeria, we all desire to see our nation

outgrowing these societal defects as soon as possible. Yet as remarked above, the mere

advancement of brilliant reasons for graduate/youth unemployment and general

underdevelopment in Nigeria without any concerted action against these undesirable

features of our society will do the nation no good whatsoever. Hence we must begin at

this point to generate workable ideas toward realising the change from the very high

risk status of graduate/youth unemployment (Manilla 2003) to the preferred status of

higher graduate output and graduate absorptive capacity of the Nigerian society in the

21st century AD.

Against the foregoing background, this paper sets out to advance novel

reconceptualisations of business, business education, business teacher education and

business management education, which inherently constitute a new and surer

foundation for realising significant enhancements in graduate/youth employment and

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national development.

Theoretical/Conceptual Framework

It is universally recognised that the silent but sure phenomenon of human cultural

evolution (or revolution, considering the current superlative rate of progressive

technological change) is today taking the human race through what is now globally

called the information or computer age (Gupta, 2007; Omole, 2003; Osahogulu, 2007;

Turban, Maclean & Wetherbe, 2004; Nwankwo, 2003). Hence the really effective

solutions to any large scale societal problems such as those of graduate/youth

employment and the lingering status of underdevelopment have to be rooted in the

computer-facilitated application of informatics, the mathematical science of

information creation, processing and transmission (Hillier & Hillier, 2003). Therefore

at the macroeconomic level, the Munasinghe (1983) mathematical model of time-based

national aggregate computer service demand applies:

Ct= F (Pt, Yt, Zt), ………………………………. (1),

where in any given time period t, say 2012,

Ct = the aggregate demand for computer services;

Pt = unit price of computer services;

Yt = level of economic activity or national income;

Zt = vector of other relevant economic variables such as

national population, indices of reliability, computing speed,

processor component size, etc.

For example, the general features of the individual bivariate curves linking Ct with Pt,

Ct with Yt and Ct with Zt can be plotted for Nigeria using 2010 data to obtain the

typical effective values of the coefficients or indices respectively linking Ct to Pt, Yt and

Zt. Where the complete data set can be obtained, a specification of the multiple

regression curve can be sought at once in the form: Ct = Bo + B1 Pt + B2 Yt + B3 Zt

Similarly, the national economic policy efforts to be made at utilising the

functional relation between service/industrial productivity and labour employment

level can rely on the Cobb-Douglas national production functional model:

P (x, y) = KXa Yb ……………………………. (2)

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where P is the aggregate production of a national economy or of a firm in the economy,

X is the number of units of labour employed in the productive process and Y is the

number of units of capital outlay committed to the production of the P units

(Munasinghe, 1989).

It is quite imaginable to utilise equations (1) and (2) above to raise Ct or the

period-specific computer service demand (i.e. the computerisation of sectoral

manufacturing and service operations) while at the same time, raising the strength (X)

of the effective sectoral labour force (say by employing additional labour) and by

raising the value of capital input level (Y). It is inferentially asserted therefore that:

(a) ICT resource development or acquisition and consumption together

constitute a sound proxy complex variable or parameter for gauging

national development (Pitke, 1989); and that

(b) national economic policies designed to drive up aggregate economic

productivity are logically bound to raise graduate/youth employment to

crisis-diffusing levels (Abolo, 1998).

From the inferences (a) and (b), it can be rationally judged that equations (1) and (2)

provide sufficient public/business policy guidance hints for attenuating the twin

dreaded societal pathological conditions of graduate/youth unemployment and the

apparently inevitable perpetuity of national underdevelopment in a developing country

like Nigeria.

National Examples

Several developing nations, including some in Africa have already done or are

currently utilising the principles of the conclusions drawn in (a)and (b) to

simultaneously drive up graduate/youth employment and national development.

Examples include Pakistan (MOE, Islamabad, 2006), Rwanda (Artenstein, 2008),

Indonesia (Surjadl & Luhukay, 1989) and South Africa (Business Eye, 7-13 April,

2008). India too has for over a decade remained famous as the home base of many

private sector companies to which software development tasks are outsourced by the

large and complex global organisatons of the western industrialised nations (Ball,

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McCulloch, Jr, Frantz, Geringer & Minor, 2004).

The Subject Reconceptualisation Questions

The problem under consideration in this paper is presented in these three subject

reconceptualisation questions (SRQs), which help to clarify and define the hitherto

unresolved broad problem of how best to reconceptualise and thereby to remodel

business education for its significantly enhanced functionality and national

development propulsion.

SRQ1

What novel redefinition of business is the most likely to result in a functional view of

business education?

SRQ2

What corresponding redefinition of business education is then the most likely to

render it sufficiently functional to support productive graduate self-employment or

paid employment?

SRQ3

What normative mutually beneficial working relationship should exist between

business administrative education (BAE) and business teacher education (BTE) as

the two major broad divisions of business education?

For purposes of the discourse in this paper, the required definitions may be rendered

as follows:

(1) Business is that all-inclusively broad field of learning and work concerned

with the theoretically informed practical development and implementation

of systematic processes targeted at the feasible, planned, designed,

marketed, financed, accountable, engineering/technology-facilitated and

profitable production and/or sale of goods, services and ideas to satisfy

specific human needs.

(2) Business education is therefore the helping professional blend of

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activities such as competent theoretical / practical teaching, responsive

theoretical / practical learning, supervised industrial work exposure,

supervised research and supervised evaluation episodes, which are all

carefully designed to foster certifiably functional human cognitive,

affective, psychomotive and psychoproductive growth and development in

the business domain.

(3) (a) Business administrative education (BAE) – is itself then simply that

brand of business education which appeals to

the business specialist who is optionally bound for a nonteaching

professional corporate administrative or managerial role.

(b) Business teacher education (BTE) is the brand of business education

which is suitably designed for the business specialist who is optionally

bound for a teaching professional role at a specific level of a particular

nation’s education system.

(c) Business management is the learnable and practicable professional

discipline of business administrative education which focuses on

developing the business administrative functions of informed

policy/strategy formulation, planning, organising, directing and

controlling for proficient and accountable corporate resource acquisition,

allocation and sound commitment to the production and continuous

refinement of high quality goods, services and ideas (Ibekwe, 1984).

The painstaking coinage of the definitions in 3 (a), 3 (b) and 3 (c) is

intended to suggest with all seriousness that suitably qualified business

teaching at any level of a nation’s education system strictly calls for the

prior acquisition of the business teacher education (BTE) variant of

business education. In other words, the PhD holder in business

management, accounting or any other business administrative discipline

is strictly not a duly qualified professional teacher of his subject.

University lecturers are today expected to undertake some postgraduate

(postdoctoral) level of complementary conversion programmes in

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professional education. This is a welcome global trend in the preparation

of advanced course lecturers for individuals aiming at filling teaching

positions in tertiary education. Teaching staff or faculty professionalism is

especially strongly stressed today in teacher educational institutions

(Menon & Rama, 2006).

Postgraduation Employment Assurance Strategies

It is a truism to assert that over the foreseeable future at least, the low graduate

absorptive capacity of the Nigerian economy may not change much. Hence the

business education graduate may consider and adopt any of the following self-help

strategies if only to avert the boredom of the otherwise inevitable endless wait for

nonexistent suitably paid job openings:

(1) Voluntary and free teaching service in a needy public or private school.

(2) Running private preparation classes for public examination candidates like

those preparing for UTME, JSCE, SSCE, etc.

(3) Forming, duly registering and running a nongovernmental organisation

specialising in rendering paid consultancy services to Small-and-Medium

Enterprise (SME) owners.

(4) Securing some reasonable capital fund and then investing it in an affordable

trading business (Oyinkari, 2006).

(5) Seeking out and taking up a part-time job in a public or private establishment

(e.g. a business centre, a canteen, a bookshop, etc) while learning the

technicalities of the business in preparation for subsequent independent self-

engagement in the same business.

(6) Embarking on a phone boot business and of course with due support from the

TSPs (i.e. the telephone service providers e.g. Airtel, MTN, GLO, etc).

(7) Embarking on a well-managed news/information agency.

(8) Raising some capital fund and running a small full-range IT business centre

(Oyinkari, 2006).

(9) Where family financial support exists, embarking at once on a postgraduate

degree or diploma programme of a professional nature.

(10) Operating a car wash business.

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(11) Operating an adult business education class for relatively illiterate contractors,

suppliers, traders and skilled workers.

(12) Opening a duly registered news/entertainment centre complete with radio,

television, video machine, assorted newsmagazines, novels, DVD, CDs, etc.

(13) Operating a duly registered public canteen equipped with comfortable furniture

and electronic entertainment/communications media.

(14) Operating a private business education library.

(15) Publishing a specialist oriented weekly newsmagazine or newspaper (e.g. for

publishing the best ten Sunday sermons of the churches in say, Port Harcourt).

(16) Running a freelance consultancy service on IT software legality and application

(Oluwafemi, 2008; Akinyele, 1995).

(17) Operating a market/marketing research or business research outfit (Cooper &

Schindler, 2003).

(18) Operating a testing service on general current affairs.

(19) Operating a testing service on the basic school subjects such as English,

mathematics, agricultural science, biology, health education, chemistry,

physics, further mathematics, business studies, economics, commerce,

government, statistics, computer science, IT or ICT, etc.

(20) Operating a GSM phone charging booth business which is powered by an

affordable electricity generator.

This list could continue but it is already long enough to reveal the

underlying principle in its generation: the three-part principle of readiness for

creativity, learning and industry that is, productive or result-oriented hard work

(Good, 2004). If for example, a business education graduate decides to operate an

exquisitely run internet café, (i.e. cybercafe’), then he or she first has to learn the

requisite computer science, technology application and computer programming with

all its mathematical foundations such as discrete mathematics (Rosen, 1999; Sarkar,

2006), operations research (Hillier & Lieberman, 2005) and finite mathematics

(Barnett, Ziegler & Byleen, 2000).

Conclusion

In this paper, the change-demanding situation regarding graduate/youth

unemployment and the seemingly perpetual state of underdevelopment in Nigeria have

been considered. It is the author’s firm conclusion that while government is the prime

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agent of development which helps in fostering policies and strategies for national

development, business investments and effective business management/operations

are the prime actualisers of government desire for national prosperity and

development. It is, therefore, posited here that functional business education is at the

core of the short-term solution to the youth/graduate unemployment problem in

Nigeria. For example, in the core-global financial capitals of London, Paris, New York

and other cities in their class, it is the successful business corporations which by their

employment policies, trendy skyscrapers and company premises, determine the overall

exquisite beauty of their host urban environments. Hence it is concluded here that

education in business is the most effective way to develop modern society for man.

Hence the effective and efficient management/operations of business organisations is

correspondingly the most potent positive contributor to educated labour engagement

and entrepreneurial/ economic/environmental development in every nation.

Recommendations

The following recommendations are made in the light of the facts and arguments set

forth in this paper.

[1]. The subjects of business administration and business education should

henceforth be viewed, studied and applied with respective due emphases on

corporate professional practice and student teacher preparation for professional

teaching, research and community-based educational development. At the same

time, business education should reflect the bidimensional coverage of business

administrative education and business teacher education.

[2]. The relatively new specialist modules of business education such as

management science/ operations research, technology management,

management information systems (MIS), information technology – IT (Sawyer,

2000), and business ethics should be treated with renewed emphasis. At the

same time, business-community conflict management, entrepreneurial

education (Okala, 2004), business games, e-business/e-commerce and business

policy/strategy should also be included on the business education core

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curricula and treated with the utmost seriousness which they deserve today.

This will ensure thegreater functionality of business education for the business

education graduate today.

[3]. Business education should also be included on the undergraduate general

studies curriculum as implied in Adeoye (2008).

[4]. The e-learning systems which the new Rivers State Sustainable Development

Agency (RSSDA, 2008) is collaborating with Intel Corporation to install and

operate in the state education sector can be a most potent means to realising this

suggested liberalisation of business education if it is adopted and implemented

nation-wide in Nigeria.

[5]. Business administration graduates wishing to make a career in today’s more

attractive teaching service should first of all take advantage of the occupational

conversion opportunities provided by such postgraduate degree programmes as

the PDE (i.e. PGDE). Without this effort, they cannot meet the registrability

requirements of the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN).

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