Investigation into Causes of Inadequate Academic Staff in Public Universities in North-Central Nigeria

Abstract

The study investigated causes of inadequate academic staff in Public Universities in North-Central, Nigeria. The researchers used descriptive research survey design for the study. The study comprised a population of two hundred (200) respondents which was made up of academic staff selected from four public universities in North-central, Nigeria. Purposive, Stratified and systematic sampling technique was used to select the sample population from the all the public universities in the region. A structured questionnaire, titled the ‘Investigation into causes of Inadequate Academic Staff Questionnaire’ (ICIASQ) was used in collecting information for the study. The questionnaire contains 14 sub-question items, and the response options with values assigned to them are: YES and NO options. The reliability of the instrument was determined through the test re-test method. The scores of the first and second administrations were correlated using Pearson Product moment Correlation Co-efficient statistic and the correlation co-efficient value stood at 0.88 which was considered high enough to confirm the instrument is reliable. Data was collected by the questionnaire and were analyzed using percentage and chi-square. The study concludes that underfunding, poor manpower planning, poor motivation, government policy on embargo, corruption (Ghost worker) and strike action problems are the causes of inadequate academic staff in the public universities in North-central Nigeria and the implications of shortage of academic staff in public universities include poor implementation of teaching programme, high student-lecturers ratio, heavy workload for lecturers, poor local and international ranking, bad international image, poor coverage of scheme of work and poor academic programme accreditation. The study established there is significance relationship between inadequate academic staff and public universities performance in North-Central, Nigeria. The study recommended that the federal and state government should increase the funding of public universities in the region.