Influence of Artificial Intelligence on the Employability Skills of Accounting Graduates from Business Education Programmes

Abstract

from Business Education programmes. The descriptive research design of survey type was adopted. The target population of the study comprised 187 postgraduate students of Lagos State University (55) and Tai Solarin Federal University of Education (132) using total enumeration. A self-developed questionnaire titled Artificial Intelligence and Employability Skills of Accounting Graduates Questionnaire (AIESAGQ) was used for data collection with (r = .87), (r = .82), (r = .89) and (r = .92) reliability coefficients for employability skills, OpenAI’s, Microsoft’s Bing AI, and generative artificial intelligence respectively. Mean, standard deviation and bar-chart were used for analyzing research question 1 and hypotheses were tested using regression analysis. The findings of the study revealed that employability skills were highly required for accounting graduates from Business Education programmes (3.41 > 2.50). There are positive significant influence of OpenAI’s (β = .381, t = 4.077, p < .05), Microsoft’s Bing AI (β = .249, t = 2.546, p < .05) and generative artificial intelligence (β = .256, t = 2.626, p < .05) on the employability skills. The study concluded that Artificial Intelligence and its segments were factors that can positively foster employability skills of accounting graduates from Business Education programmes. It was recommended that the Business Education accounting options curriculum should be redesign with the view to accommodate AI and its segments skills into the teaching and learning at the undergraduates’ level.