Problems of Tertiary Education in Nigeria: An Impediment to Effective Management in the 21st Century

Abstract

One of the most enduring legacies parents and the country can pass on to its youths is education. All over the world, education is seen and assumed to be the most veritable instrument of change, as any fundamental change in the intellectual and social outlook of any society has to be preceded by an educational revolution. The fulfillment of this role lies on functional education. The mandate of higher institutions is to develop the whole man mentally, morally and physically and to confer degrees on their products who are found worthy in character and learning, to enable them assume leadership roles in their immediate and extended society. This paper recognizes the fact that in spite of this mandate, tertiary institutions in Nigeria find it difficult to provide the enabling environment for the actualization of their mission  largely because of absence of quality human resource, lack of finance/funds, recruitment condition of staff, poor remuneration, dilapidated infrastructure proliferation of tertiary institutions and academics periodicals, ever increasing rate of student enrollment without accompanying support facilities, lack of adequate counselling programmes, poor welfare programmes, poor time management and study habit skills, poorly planned orientation and character development programmes, poor health and sexuality programmes etc. This paper therefore investigates the perception of female and male academic staff of higher institutions and to ascertain the problems that impede the effective management of tertiary education in the Nigeria, in the 21^st century. Two research questions and one hypothesis were posed to guide the study. Data were collected from 300 respondents from academic staff in different departments from two universities, namely Abia State University and Imo State University of Nigeria using a 30 item structured questionnaire titled "Problems and Management of Tertiary Education in Nigeria” (PMTEN) developed by the researcher and administered on female and male academic staff respectively, selection was done by stratified random sampling and validated by two experts and having a reliability index of 0.81. Mean on a four-point scale and standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while the hypothesis was tested using T-test statistic. The findings revealed among others that the female and male academic staff perceives that corruption and lack of finance for adequate development are the major impediments for effective management of higher education in the 21^st century. Based on the findings, the researcher, recommended amongst others that the government and education authority should increase financial allocation to the education sectors and organize training sections for staff development on management of both human and material resources were made and conclusion drawn.