Diversification of Sources of Funding University Education for Sustainability: Challenges and Strategies for Improvement

Universities in Nigeria have been embarking on aggressive diversification of funding sources in order to sustain their programmes in the face of dwindling budgeting allocation to higher institutions. The diversification, though successful, has its own challenges. This paper examines the diversification of funding sources and the accompanying challenges. Descriptive survey design was utilized in this study. Three research questions were raised for the study. The sample of the study comprised 480 academic staff which were drawn from four federal universities in south-south Nigeria. An instrument titled "Diversification of Funding Sources Questionnaire (DFSQ)" was developed by the researchers, validated and used for data collection. The reliability index of the instrument was 0.83. Data collected were subjected to analysis using descriptive statistics, means and standard deviations. Findings revealed some of the diversified sources of funding to include: consultancy services, commercialization of physical facilities, part- time degree programmes among others. Findings also indicated the challenges to include mismanagement of funds, poor attitude of staff, increased students' population which affects the staff- students’ ratio, and lack of entrepreneurial culture. Recommendations were made that there should be strict adherence to financial regulations in the management of financial resources and admission intake into consultancy programmes should be regulated and controlled.