EVALUATION OF CAUSES OF INADEQUATE FUNDS IN NIGERIAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

The study investigated the causes of inadequate funds in Nigerian Public Universities with the Case Study of some selected Federal Universities from the North central Geo-Political Zone of Nigeria. This study adopted a survey design, which covered three Universities selected by the researchers from this zone. Therefore, the population of the study comprised all the academic staff from the selected three institutions in the North-central Geo-political zone of Nigeria. Simple random sampling technique was adopted to select 100 lecturers from each of the Universities making the study totaling sample of 300 academic staff. The simple random sampling (lottery) method was used to select 300 respondents based on proportional representation. The study used questionnaire with fourteen questions that is titled the Causes of Inadequate Funds in Nigerian Public Universities for data collection. The questionnaire" [CIFNPUQ], adopted a four point Likert-scale of measurement namely: Strongly agree (SA), agree (SA), disagree (D), strongly disagree (SD). The reliability of the instrument was established through test-retest method. This study used SPSS (Statistical Package of Social Sciences) software for data analysis. Data collected was cleansed by the researchers who removed the unwanted data. The results were analyzed using percentage, mean and standard deviation. The cut-off point for decision was 3.00 based on a four point rating scale. The decision rule therefore was that any item with mean score of 3.00 and above accepted while items whose mean score below 3.00 were rejected. The study reveals that poor government allocations, low internally generated revenue, low school fees, institutional corruptions, poor planning/projection, poor research income and poor contribution from private sector, NGO and alumnus. The study also confirmed that the effect of inadequate funding of Nigerian public universities is responsible for poor teaching and learning, inadequate infrastructural facilities, shortage of academic staff, poor research programme, poor staff development programme and poor quality of education.