Evaluating University Funding and Financing Sustainability in Nigeria: A Descriptive Literature Review of Efficiency, Accountability and Institutional Outcomes

Inadequate public financing, infrastructure deficits, rise in operational costs, infrastructure deficits, growing demands for quality teaching, research and innovations all raise concerns around the financial sustainability of Nigerian universities, such that have become increasingly important over the yeas.. From an Educational Measurement and Evaluation perspective, this article evaluates university funding and financial sustainability in Nigeria, focusing on funding adequacy, resource-use efficiency, financial accountability, revenue diversification and institutional outcomes. A Descriptive Literature Review Design is adopted in the study as it synthesises relevant scholarly literature, policy documents and authoritative institutional sources on higher-education financing. It is a review centrally informed by Ndubuisi-Okolo and Dibua (2023), whose critical review identifies insufficient funding, poor management, limited institutional autonomy and political factors as major constraints on the financial sustainability of Nigerian public universities, while advocating revenue diversification through grants, consultancy, business ventures, investments and alumni engagement. The review further discovers that financial sustainability should not be assessed solely by the volume of funding received, but by the relationship between financial inputs, management processes, institutional outputs, educational outcomes and the capacity to sustain those outcomes. The usefulness of evaluation approaches such as the Balanced Scorecard in assessing institutional financial sustainability is demonstrated in existing Nigerian evidence, while research on performance-based funding suggests that funding can be linked to measurable quality and completion outcomes. Consequently this article proposes the University Financial Sustainability and Institutional Performance Index (UFSIPI) as a conceptual framework comprising funding adequacy, financial efficiency, accountability, revenue diversification, institutional outputs, educational outcomes and long-term sustainability. It is a framework proposed for future empirical validation.