FUNDING, INTERNAL EFFICIENCY AND GOAL ACHIEVEMENT OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN NORTH CENTRAL, NIGERIA
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Date
2018-07
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UNIVERSITY OF ILORIN
Abstract
Funding inadequacy of university education in Nigeria has contributed to the production of graduates who could not impact positively the economic and social development of the nation. Thus, this study set out to investigate funding, internal efficiency and goal achievement of university education in North-central Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to: (i) identify sources of university education funding; (ii) investigate adequacy of funds released to universities; (iii) examine provision of physical facilities, capacity building programmes for lecturers, ICT tools, mentorship and lecturers’ welfare services; (iv) determine wastage and graduation rates; (v) determine the relationship between university funding and goal achievement; (vi) determine the relationship between internal efficiency and goal achievement; and (vii) determine the relationship among funding, internal efficiency and goal achievement of university education in North-central Nigeria.
The study adopted a descriptive research design of correlation type. The population comprised all seven federal universities in North-central Nigeria. This is because they had the same funding policy. Five of these institutions that had the required data to measure internal efficiency were purposively chosen. Four faculties were randomly selected in each of the institutions. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 1076 lecturers out of the 2404 lecturers in the institutions. Funding and Internal Efficiency Questionnaire (FIEQ); Goal Achievement Questionnaire (GAQ); Resource Availability Check-lists (RAC) and Student’s Academic Performance Proforma (SAPP) were the instruments used for data collection. The questionnaires were content-validated and reliability coefficients of 0.87 and 0.72 for FIEQ and GAQ, respectively were obtained. Descriptive statistics of percentage and mean score were used to answer the research questions, while multiple regression analysis and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation statistics were used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 significance level.
The findings of the study were that:
i. Federal universities relied heavily on monthly subvention and administrative charges as sources of funding;
ii. funds released for university education in Nigeria were not adequate as the gap between proposed budget and funds released from year 2011 and 2015 ranged between 26% and 39%;
iii. provision of funds for physical facilities, capacity building programmes, ICT tools, mentorship, and lecturers’ welfare services were fair in the institutions (mean scores of 3.03, 3.24, 3.32, 3.16 and 3.29 respectively);
iv. in the institutions, student academic wastages were very low (5%) while graduation rates were very high (95%);
v. significant relationship existed between university funding and goal achievement (r = 0.34, p ˂ 0.05);
vi. significant relationship existed between internal efficiency and university goal achievement (r = 0.47, p ˂ 0.05); and
vii. significant relationship existed among funding, internal efficiency and university goal achievement (R2 = 0.032, p ˂ 0.05).
The study concluded that funding of university was inadequate. This had led to low level of internal efficiency in achieving university goals in the study area. It was recommended, that there should be improved funding from all stakeholders for adequate provision of resources while the universities should improve on their internal revenue generation drive.
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FUNDING, INTERNAL EFFICIENCY, GOAL ACHIEVEMENT, UNIVERSITY EDUCATION, NORTH CENTRAL, NIGERIA