The Role of Technical Education Programme in Creating Job Opportunities for Technical Education Graduates in Rivers State

Abstract

The study determined the role of technical education programme in creating job opportunities for technical education graduates in Rivers State. A sample size of 100 male postgraduate students out of a population 250 male postgraduate technical education students through purposive sampling technique was used for the study while 32 female postgraduate t echnical education students were used without sampling. The instrument used for data collection was a - 28 items questionnaire structured in a – 4 points rating scale which was validated by three experts in technical education and its reliability coefficient of 0.80 was obtained using Cronbach’s Alpha co-efficient method. Men and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while z-test was used to test the three hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The major findings revealed that electrical/electronics technology skills such as ability to design and interpret drawings, ability to use modern equipment to detect electrical faults are skills that can create job opportunities for technical education graduates, building technology skills such as ability to design building plan, ability to interpret building plan are skills that can create job opportunities as supervisor or technician for technical education graduates upon graduation in Rivers State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that modern equipment, tools and machines should be supplied to all the technical training institutions workshops for effective teaching and learning process. In addition, institutions of higher learning in Nigeria should ensure that they liaise with industries around them to form partnership to ease the impartation of necessary effective skills that graduates of technical education needed for employment upon graduation.