Funding options as panacea for challenges faced in public universities

Abstract

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 public 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 some options to funding university education in Nigeria such as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), TETFund, donor agencies, contributions from users of education and government improvement in budgetary allocation as the university challenges are becoming more eminent as identified. Some of the challenges include inadequate financing, deteriorated infrastructure, brain-drain and university autonomy. The paper recommended that government should allocate more funds to the public universities so that they can be more effective, universities should establish and equip a unit in their institutions solely for the purpose of generating funds internally. Various stakeholders should also be encouraged to give more financial support to university education. The emoluments of public university staff should be reviewed upward to prevent brain drain. An enabling teaching-learning environment is to be assured and the autonomy to public universities would help reduce the extent of political interference in the affairs of these institutions.