CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter focuses on the review of related and relevant literature of studies carried out by scholars and researchers on labour market core skills requirements and graduate soft skills competence. The chapter will be organised under the following sub-headings:
a. The University Education and Its Mandate
b. Theoretical Framework
c. Concept of Labour Market Core Skills Requirements
d. Determinants of Labour Market Requirements
e. Manpower Forecast Approaches
f. Concept of Graduate Soft Skills Competence
g. Empirical Studies
h. Conceptual Framework
i. Appraisal of the Literature Reviewed
The University Education and Its Mandate
University is a cloistered home and a community of scholars who share collegiality. The university, being an academy of scholars, is the heights and biggest form of human and educational organisation with traditions and models of excellence and mastery in faculties and specialisations (Babatola, 2015). Babatola depitched that the university education is a specialised and higher form of education. The university education is consequently an input and end-product of highly endowed scholarship and well organised academic instruction to knowledge, science (methods) and culture which are tailored by the biggest forms of specialised human establishment.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria (2014) in education policy document defined tertiary education as the education given in institutions such as universities and inter-university centres such as the Nigeria French language Village, Nigeria Arabic Language Centre, National Institute for Nigerian Languages, Innovation Enterprise Institutions (IEIs), and Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Monotechnics. The form of education given in those institutions is to:
1. contribute to national development through high-level manpower training
2. provide accessible and affordable quality
3. provide learning opportunities in formal and informal education in response to the needs and interest of all Nigerians
4. provide high-quality career counselling and life-long learning programmes that prepare students with the knowledge and skills for self-reliance and the world of work.
5. reduce skill shortages through the production of skilled manpower relevant to the needs of the labour market.
6. promote and encourage scholarship, entrepreneurship and community service.
7. forge and cement national unity and
8. promote national and international understanding and interaction.
In accomplishing the goals of tertiary education, which invariably encapsulate the purpose of the university education in Nigeria, every university as a tertiary educational institution is required to achieve its goals through the quest for: quality teaching, research and development, high standards in the quality of facilities, services and resources, staff development programmes and provision of a more practical based curriculum relevant to the needs of the labour market. Others including generation and dissemination of knowledge, skills and competencies that contribute to national and local economic goals which enable students to succeed in a knowledge-based economy, a variety of modes of programmes including full-time, part-time, block-release, day-release, sandwich and so on, access to training funds such as those provided by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) and Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES).
The university education in Nigeria has prompted the advancement of numerous Nigerians into sound and effective citizens. The education has led to higher self-awareness and self-realisation of people at different tasks and improved better human relationships, national consciousness and effective citizenship. One cannot question the contributions of the university education system to social, cultural, economic, political, scientific and technological advancement in Nigeria. The country is more blessed now with specialists in various fields of endeavour: medicine, law, engineering, philosophy, education and so on. Due to this advancement, the country is increasingly unique, dynamic and self-reliant as the days pass by. This has been made conceivable through the university education (Jake, 2012).
The history of the university education in Nigeria started with the Elliot Commission of 1943, which led to the establishment of University College Ibadan (UCI) in 1948. UCI was an affiliate of the University of London (Ike, 1976). According to Ibukun (1997), the UCI was saddled with a number of problems at the inception ranging from rigid constitutional provisions, Very Low staffing and low enrolment to the high dropout rate.
