ASSESSMENT OF INSTITUTIONAL EXPENDITURE ON UNDERGRADUATE TRAINING IN FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, AKURE

Abstract

Education in general and tertiary education in particular has been identified as a necessary catalyst and indispensable tool for a nation's economic growth and development. Notwithstanding, the university system in Nigeria is being faced with the challenge of inadequate funding with an attendant increase in the enrolment size of the institutions, which has witnessed gross inadequacy of educational infrastructures for up to date research and learning. Thus, the study assessed institutional expenditure on undergraduate training in Federal University of Technology Akure. Secondary data for the study were collected on six of the nine schools (faculties) of the university that were purposively selected for the study. Data collected covered a period of five years between 2011 and 2015. Descriptive statistics technique such as tables, frequencies and means were used to highlight the sources and level of funding available to Federal University of Technology, Akure while unit cost of education model was adopted to determine the unit cost of university education in the various faculties or schools. Independent samples T-test, an inferential statistics was used to determine the degree and direction of relationships that exists among the variables of the study and subsequent testing of hypothesis. The study found that foremost among the identified constraints is the dwindling level of funding in relation to the purchasing power of the country’s currency (Naira) and the yearly increase in level of enrolment at the University. It was also revealed that government grant to the institution was consistently 23% to 34% lesser than the institutional cost per student except in 2013 when there was a 15% shortfall. The mean total grant per undergraduate student received by the institution for the period under study was ₦150,968 while the mean institutional cost per undergraduate student over the period was ₦204,997. The study concluded that despite increased undergraduate enrolment between from 2011 to 2015, there was a huge shortfall in grant received in relation to institutional cost per undergraduate student by the university. The study however recommended that adequate budgetary allocation to education sector is supposed to be in geometric progression in consonance with the UNESCO benchmark of 26% rather than retrogression or stagnation as currently being experienced. Also, efforts must be directed towards performance-based funding mechanism in order to establish healthy competition among Nigerian universities. In performance-based funding as an output-driven approach to allocating funds to universities, emphasis should be placed on agreed or consistent indicators or outcomes for evaluating universities in order to allocate funds.