Effect of Funding on the Performance of Selected Public Universities in Nigeria

Abstract

The public universities in Nigeria are expected to provide quality services at the time that the service is seriously needed but this is often not achieved in practice because the proportion of public universities needing the funding on an annual basis continues to increase and the available capacity to meet the challenges is grossly inadequate and university education remains a sensitive instrument and a means for sustaining the development of a nation. In spite of all these accessing the funding is still entangled with quality of teaching and research, quality of infrastructural facilities, timeliness of brain-drain syndrome, accredited academic program and strike actions. The objective of the study is to investigate the effect of funding on the performance of selected public universities in Nigeria. Survey method was used and data was collected using a well structure questionnaire which was analyzed using Descriptive Statistics and Regression Analysis to test the formulated hypotheses with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 22 for analysis of data and a sample of 220 respondents using Taro Yamane’s simplified formulae. The results showed that there is a wide gap between funds requirement and funds provided to the selected public universities which affected the performance of selected public universities in Nigeria and the general well-being of academic staff. In light of these, the study recommended that management of the selected universities should adopt a proactive investment strategy to generate funds, collaborate with private sector for joint funding to provide quality infrastructural facilities in the selected public universities.