(745)PROBLEMS OF TERTIARY EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: AN IMPEDIMENT TO EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY

摘要

One of the most enduring legacies parents and the country can pass on to its youths is education. Allover the world, education is seen and assumed to be the most veritable instrument of change, as anyfundamental change in the intellectual and social outlook of any society has to be preceded by aneducational revolution. The fulfillment of this role lies on functional education. The mandate of higherinstitutions is to develop the whole man mentally, morally and physically and to confer degrees ontheir products who are found worthy in character and learning, to enable them assume leadershiproles in their immediate and extended society. This paper recognizes the fact that in spite of thismandate, tertiary institutions in Nigeria find it difficult to provide the enabling environment for theactualization of their mission largely because of absence of quality human resource, lack offinance/funds, recruitment condition of staff, poor remuneration, dilapidated infrastructure proliferationof tertiary institutions and academics periodicals, ever increasing rate of student enrollment withoutaccompanying support facilities, lack of adequate counselling programmes, poor welfare programmes,poor time management and study habit skills, poorly planned orientation and character developmentprogrammes, poor health and sexuality programmes etc. This paper therefore investigate theperception of female and male academic staff of higher institutions and to ascertain the problems thatimpede the effective management of tertiary education in the Nigeria, in the 21st century. Tworesearch questions and one hypothesis were posed to guide the study. Data were collected from 300respondents from academic staff in different departments from two universities, namely Abia StateUniversity 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 researcherand administered on female and male academic staff respectively, selection was done by stratifiedrandom sampling and validated by two experts and having a reliability index of 0.81. Mean on a fourpoint scale and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypothesiswas tested using T-test statistic. The findings revealed among others that the female and maleacademic staff perceive that corruption and lack of finance for adequate development are the majorimpediments for effective management of higher education in the 21st century. Based on the findings,the researcher, recommended amongst others that the government and education authority shouldincrease financial allocation to the education sectors and organize training sections for staffdevelopment on management of both human and material resources were made and conclusiondrawn.