In Nigeria, the demand for higher education is so high because education has been considered as not only an investment in human capital, but also a pre-requisite for economic development. The major source of fund to universities in Nigeria is the government proving about 90% of the total expenditure. Universities in Nigeria require a significant amount of funds to achieve their goals and objective, however, funds allocated to university education in Nigeria continue to be inadequate with the attendant effects of negative influences on the university system. The objective of the paper is to examine the present financial status of the universities to establish whether there is adequacy or inadequacy of funds to universities in Nigerian. The analysis is based on a secondary data and covers 2010-2011academic session and both descriptive and inferential statistic was used. The result reveals that university education is still not adequately funded to meet up with the international benchmark and best practice. The paper concludes that both private and public universities should intensify effort in revenue generation and also they should efficiently utilize the little resources available to them.

Most of the challenges facing Nigerian universities are traceable to inadequate funding. The sector often blames the government for inadequate funding of public universities while the government complains of scarce resources. The incessant closure of universities as a result of unresolved issues between labour/student unions and management, as well as the government is usually as a result of funding such as unpaid outstanding allowances and dilapidated facilities among others. This paper explored other alternatives to funding university education in Nigeria as the beneficiaries of university education were identified because every rational individual will contribute to a project because of the benefit they will get from it. The paper recommended that all beneficiaries of university education should be informed through approprite medium to contribute their quotas to the funding process. Managements of universities are also challenged to judiciously use available resources.

ABSTRACT Higher education particularly university education in Nigeria plays a crucial role in the supply of highly skilled manpower to manned different sectors of the nation’s economy. The gross under-funding of the education sector in the country has been rendering the university system incapacitated. This paper examined issues such as, description of the Nigerian higher education system, financing higher education in Nigeria, problems of funding and utilization in Tertiary institutions in Nigeria, and finally Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). This paper concluded that management of higher education in general and university in particular has been bedeviled by inadequate funding. The Paper recommend that universities should be adequately funded and finally good management and accountability in the universities should be ensured.

This paper examined the modes of funding Nigerian universities with a view to assessing their adequacy and effectiveness. The implications of the mechanisms of funding on university performance were investigated. The history of university funding in Nigeria was explored in order to determine the causes of shift in financing the system since 1948 when the first university was established. The paper revealed that the costs of financing universities including: costs of teaching, research and administration, cost of accommodating increased enrollments, expenses of student maintenance, payment of staff entitlement/salaries and maintenance of facilities are increasing in excess of the corresponding rates of available revenues. The divergence in the trajectories of total university educational cost, the total available revenue and government subvention has led to capacity constraints of universities. This is evident in poor quality of teaching and research, poor conditions of work and insu...

Higher Education is viewed in Nigeria, as in many other developing nations, as a critical contributor to national development. This is because of the belief that economic and social developments are driven more by the advancement and the application of knowledge. This belief has therefore made the Federal Government in Nigeria to keep playing a prominent role in the development of education in terms of funding and even governance. A National policy on education was therefore designed to chart the course of educational development in the country and has been a major reference point to both the public and private education providers. Higher Education funding has been described as the process of procuring and disbursing financial resources to tertiary institutions, for the provision of education of a given standard. Authors: Abd Rahman Ahmad, Kofar-Sauri Bello Garba, Ng Kim Soon and Abubakar Sadiq Bappah

This paper focuses on one of the most prominent problems facing education in Nigeria - poor financing - with a view to proffering some possible solution. Education is the bedrock of every nation and if Nigeria would achieve its goals as a nation as well as favourably compete with other nations of the world, the education system needs to be adequately funded and very well managed. With a concentration of public higher education in Nigeria, this paper examines the need to go beyond making Nigerians literate and numerically sound but to make them future-ready and globally competitive through quality higher education which can only be achieved through proper funding from government and support from the other educational stakeholder from within and outside the country. For meaningful development to take place in the educational sector, generally, the government needs to address the issue of funding for higher institutions so that educational resources can be adequately available and for quality higher education to be made affordable for all citizens. Individual philanthropists and corporate organizations must also play their parts in supporting higher education funding in the country. Government and the organized private sector must as well fund research programs, inventions and mass production of invented products for both national development and global relevance.

Effective Tackling of the Perennial Problem of Poor Funding of Nigerian universities, especially in this period of economic recession the nation, Nigeria is passing through cannot be over-flogged. This is very key in the light of the critical roles a university plays in national development. The existing funding mechanism for Nigerian universities, whereby universities have to wait for the partly monthly government subvention which hardly can take care of the re-current expenditures let alone of the capital expenditure must be done away with. The problem of poor funding of universities is one of the major challenges impeding the potential of the Nigerian university Education system to act as a catalyst to growth and development. To therefore address this problem, the university management must adopt aggressive and more effective strategies for proper funding of the university system. Apart from the conventional sources of funding such as government subvention, donations, endowment fund and levies among others, universities can explore alternative strategies such as taking more aggressive posture in commercializing innovation, research funding and, re-introduction of tuition fees could be considered, especially in the federally owned universities. The avenue of parents/teachers forum could equally be explored and host community contributions among others could be effectively and efficiently considered so as to boost the revenue base of Nigerian universities.

University education is a capital intensive project requiring investments of at least 15 percent of the GDP or 40 percent of the total education budget (World Bank 2010). Therefore funds allocated to university education is said to be a long term investment of immense benefit to the individual beneficiary and the society as a whole (Bassey & Akinyemi 2012). The university education financing in Nigeria shows a lack of commitment on the part of the government impacting upon the provision of a qualitative education to its citizenry. This has been evidenced in the last 10 years where the total number of students enrolment tripled while public resources allocated to the education sector from the GDP continued to decline from 11.5 percent in 2002 to 8.7 percent in 2013. Moreover, at present more than 90 percent of funding of university education in Nigeria is received from government sources which are grossly inadequate to deliver these services (Akinyemi 2013; Olayiwola 2012; Aina 2002). This study is anchored on human capital theory which advocate for private support from parent/students and other stakeholders in university financing. (Atuahene 2008).