Imperatives of Integrating Artificial Intelligence for Shaping Graduates’ Employability Skills in Public Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State

Abstract

The study investigated the imperatives of integrating artificial intelligence for shaping graduates’ employability skills in public tertiary institutions in Rivers State. Three research questions were answered and three hypotheses tested in the study. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study while the population of the study consisted of all the postgraduate students in all the tertiary educational institutions in Rivers State out of which 384 students were sampled by applying the Cochran formula for the determination of sample size from an unknown population. The respondents were sampled using multistage sampling procedure across all the tertiary educational institutions offering postgraduate programmes in River State. Instrument used for data gathering was a 15 item questionnaire named “Imperatives of Integrating Artificial Intelligence for Shaping Graduates’ Employability Skills Questionnaire” (IIAISGESQ). The questionnaire was structured along the line of the four point modified Likert scale of Strongly Agree/ Very High Level, Agree/High Level, Disagree/Low Level and Strongly Disagree/Very Low Level with weighted scores of 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively which produced an average score of 2.50 which was used for decision making. The questionnaire was face and content validated by three Measurement and Evaluation expert at the University of Port Harcourt and the reliability of the instrument was estimated 0.84 using Cronbach Alpha statistics. Out of the 384 respondents targeted for the study, only 362 (141 males and 221 females) which represented 94% of the targeted sampled respondents provided valid responses which was used for data analysis. The research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while the hypotheses were tested using z-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study showed that the students were proficient in the use of AI and that the integration of this technology enables’ graduates’ employability skills by improving on their digital literacy, improving their communication skills, data analysis skills and innovativeness. However, challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, resistance to change and inadequate AI policy at the institutional level were identified. The study recommended the need for revision of the University curriculum to capture recent employment demands in the society.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Graduate Employability, Tertiary Institutions, Education, Rivers State

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/17-3-07

Publication date: March 28^th 2026