Funding Strategies for Qualitative University Education in Developing Economies: The Case of Nigeria

The problem of funding universities in developing economies has become a reoccurring problem often resulting in calamitous effect on teaching and research, and intellectual capital flight of academics. The inadequate funding of universities in developing countries especially West Africa is a prime cause of other problems that have undermined quality in university education. With the level of funding in tertiary institutions in West Africa, there is the need to evolve some funding strategies that will make it possible for the universities to achieve qualitative education. In view of the above, this paper examines funding strategies for qualitative university education in developing economies using the experiences of the Nigerian Universities as a case study. This paper made use of secondary data which were collected from the Federal Government of Nigeria’s Office of Statistics and National Statistics Bureau. The tuition fees analyzed in this paper were collected from the admission offices of the six public universities purposively selected from 72 public universities (both federal and state universities) in Nigeria. Since the pursuit of qualitative university education bothers on all stakeholders – the government, parents, individuals, firms and cooperate bodies, this paper therefore recognizes funding as an external factor and a necessary condition for achieving qualitative university education in developing economies.