Abstract
Higher education remains the pivot of national development in Nigeria. This is because the stock of highly-educated individuals produced by higher education institutions plays an important role in the innovation and the sustainable development of any society. However, over time, these institutions have experienced increase in enrolments and yet the number of candidates seeking admission into these institutions outpaces the available spaces in the institutions. Inadequate fiscal resources have also eroded the desired qualitative higher education and the needed national development. In this paper, challenges facing planning and funding of qualitative higher education in Nigeria are examined. The paper therefore infers the need for proper planning of higher education system to ensure qualitative higher education so as to reduce educational wastages and enhance effective utilization of the available educational scarce resources.
Highlights
The role of higher education as essential to national development cannot be over emphasized
Higher education remains the pivot of national development in Nigeria
The paper infers the need for proper planning of higher education system to ensure qualitative higher education so as to reduce educational wastages and enhance effective utilization of the available educational scarce resources
Summary
The role of higher education as essential to national development cannot be over emphasized. This is due to the contribution of higher education in producing higher-level skills and competencies as essential to national development in the context of globalization and the shift towards knowledge economies For these reasons, countries all over the world, Nigeria inclusive are giving higher education the needed policy attention. Context-globalization has influenced the demand for higher education by making both employers and students to demand acquisition of higher skills This is because higher education is believed to offer the individual with new opportunities relating to technologies that help improve the ways in which knowledge can be produced, managed, disseminated, accessed and controlled. Banya (2001), on Sub-Saharan Africa, confirms that increase in students enrollment is one of the major areas of crisis in higher education as the available limited resources (physical and human) have not been able to meet the enrolment needs thereby having implications for low quality education. This paper examines the challenges in planning and funding higher education in Nigeria with a view to suggesting ways by which these problems can curbed
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