Influence of Job Suitability on the Effectiveness of Students’ Records Management in South-South Nigerian Universities

Abstract

This study examined the influence of job suitability on the effectiveness of students’ records management in South-South Nigerian Universities. A descriptive survey research design was employed for the study. The population for the study was fifteen universities that have graduated students out of the twenty-one federal, state and private universities in South-South geo-political zone of Nigeria. Based on equal representation, three each of the three types of universities were randomly selected as the sample population consisting of 1,123 officers managing students’ records and 470 university administrators. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select 564 records students’, records management officers and 237 administrators giving a sum of 801. Data were collected with a self-structured questionnaire validated with overall Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.81. A total of 531 copies of the questionnaire were validly completed and returned making it 66.3% return rate. Descriptive statistics, simple correlation and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that at the 0.05 level of significance, job suitability significantly influenced students’ records management effectiveness in the Universities as evidenced by the p-values of (0.0005, 0.0032 and 0.0143). The study concluded that job suitability is important towards achieving the effective management of students’ records in the universities. Consequently, the study recommended that University Administrators should consider recruiting personnel based on merit. Possession of requisite skills and behavioural competencies should be the focus of appointments to avoid employment of unqualified staff based on family ties, ethnicism and tribalism. Records management should be professionalized to enhance job suitability of records managers. Administrators should support adequate training/re-training of existing records officers and the National University Commission (NUC) should come up with a policy that will enable the establishment of a functional records management programme as a benchmark for program accreditation in the universities.