Abstract
Investigating the relationship characteristics of the knowledge economy and their implications
for the labour market prospects of business education graduate students in South-South
Nigeria is the central focus of this correlation study. Two research questions and two
hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The population of this study consisted of 206
postgraduate students (comprises of 125 Masters and 81 PhD students) in the department of
Business Education, in six state owned universities in South-South, Nigeria. Due to the small
nature of the population, the researchers decided to use the entire population of Two Hundred
and Six (206) post graduates students in the Business Education Department. The instruments
for data collection is a two set of self-structured questionnaire titled, characteristics of
knowledge economy questionnaire (CKEQ) for the first instrument and labour market
prospects questionnaire (LMPQ) for the second instrument. The instruments were validated by
expert in the faculty of Education and reliability indices of 0.71 and 0.83 were established
using the Cronbach Alpha statistical index. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation statistic
was used to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses with the aid of Statistical
Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 25). The findings revealed that there are indeed significant
relationships between open innovation and education and training as characteristics of
knowledge economy and Business Education graduate students’ labour market prospects in
South-South, Nigeria. Based on the results, recommendations were made as follows that the
ministry of Education should introduce knowledge economy that will incorporate leadershipfocused training in educational programmes, providing mentorship opportunities, and
fostering a culture that values forward-thinking, preparing business education graduates to
become the visionary leaders needed for sustainable economic development and Business
education student should focus on practical skills development, technological integration, and
strategic partnerships, business education programs can help graduates improve their
productivity.