Cutting-Edge Research for Global Competitiveness among Academic Staff of Faculties of Education in the Universities in South-South, Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated cutting-edge research for global competitiveness among academic staff of Faculties of Education in the universities in South- South, Nigeria. Three research questions and hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of the study comprised 864 academic staff (Males = 523; Females =341) of the Faculties of Education in the 17 public universities in South-South, Nigeria. The sample size was 375 Academic Staff (Males = 229; Females = 146) representing 43% of the population drawn using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was titled Cutting-edge Research for Global Competitiveness among Academic Staff Questionnaire (CRGCASQ). The questionnaire was structured by the researchers, validated by experts and with a reliability index of 0.79 ascertained using Cronbach’s Alpha. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while z-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. The study revealed among others that the factors that hinder cutting edge research for global competitiveness among academic staff of faculties of education in the universities in South-South, Nigeria include: not publish and perish syndrome; too much academic workloads; non-adherence to the rigors of research such as going to the field to collect data; lack of research funding and compensation; insufficient research training; lack of technical support and so on. It was recommended among others that the Deans of Faculties of Education should critically analyze the factors identified for action plan to ensure staff cutting-edge research productivity.