The Interactive Effect of Finance (Funding) and Academic Staff (Human Resources) on Economies of Scale in Nigerian Universities
Dr (Mrs) Satope Bola Funmilayo
Faculty of Business and Social Sciences
Adeleke University, Ede, Osun State
Email: satopetito@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
The study examines the effect of finance and Human resource (academic staff) on Nigerian Higher Education enrolment and economies of scale (from economics perspective). Over the years, the problem of inadequate finance (underfunding) for education had been generating a lot of strife between Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and Nigerian government. The privatisation of the Nigerian university system was a step geared toward solving problems facing the university system due to increasing enrolment. The privatisation increased enrolment and number of universities but despite the increase in enrolment the new Private Universities (41) which outnumbered the Federal(27) and State (36) Universities have less enrolment than those Public Universities. Also, the average enrolment per university shows the enrolment figures were small on the average, ranging between 4,094 and 13,018 compared with University College London which had 21,620 students in 2009 (with 4000 academic staff and 648 Professors) and was ranked the 4th university in the world (2nd in Europe) in 2010 world universities ranking (Wikipedia). Thus, Nigeria could not enjoy economies of scale despite the increase in number of universities. If Nigeria will enjoy economies of scale the enrolment must be increased but the facilities on ground could not allow for it. As Nigeria budgetary allocation to education did not meet the UNESCO recommended 26 % of budgetary allocation, the apparent shortage of finance available to the university system has been responsible for shortage of all resources. The results revealed that the interactive effect had very important impact on enrolment in Nigerian Universities. The study therefore gave some recommendations for improvement.
Keywords: finance, Academic-staff, Universities, enrolment, economies- of-scale
