In view of the multi-faceted challenges public universities are faced with, it is imperative for them to embrace new models of governance and funding, according to Prof. Tunji Olaopa.
Olaopa who is the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission canvassed this position in Abuja on Thursday during the Federal University of Lokoja & Research Enterprise System’s Conference on ‘University Governance and the Corporate World: Towards an All-of-People Approach to Financing University Education in Nigeria’.
According to Olaopa in his address as the chairman of the occasion, university education governance in Nigeria stands at a critical juncture, as it continues to be constrained by systemic and structural bottlenecks, chief of which is the funding challenge.
To him, this lingering challenge has in turn distorted and complicated the required reform that traditional university’s governance structure needs as it struggles to reconcile the conflicting associated reform imperatives of academic and administrative autonomy, operational viability, and industry relevance.
He noted that budget to education remains well below UNESCO acclaimed benchmark of 15-20% of public expenditure, even as Nigeria’s NPE itself targets 26%
Nigerian university’s severe funding challenge reflects profoundly in a research funding level accounting for less than 0.3% of annual GDP; a level that is substantially lower than the African average (0.45%) and global benchmark (1.7%).
He said: “Indeed, to break the barrier and to position higher education to take its place as a critical propeller of growth it still requires significant investment.
” For sustainable and inclusive national economic growth in equal breath, there is also an urgent need to rethink how the universities are governed, funded, and connected to society.
Indeed, to build their long-term resilience, university management must replace rigid administrative silos with a unified, inclusive, all-of-people governance model, one that directly links financial planning with collaborative strategy”
For him, this will require that universities completely change how they operate. He noted how in traditional universities, the strategic plan is a wish-list, created by university’s many committees, while budget is managed separately by bursars or financial administrators in silo which also implies that the admission department does not talk to academic affairs, and IT does not talk to student life, leading to duplicated efforts and waste.
Consequently, Olaopa called for a collaborative strategy transforming the institution from a collection of isolated departments competing for resources into an integrated system where budget decisions directly fund strategic goals .
He said that this
would then mean that no new academic programme, building, or hiring initiative can be approved unless it directly aligns with a specific KPI in the university’s strategic plan
While condemning what he called the excessive centralization of university governance, he stressed the need for a shift to an “all-of-people partnership model”.
He urged the universities in Nigeria to transcend the traditional shared governance system where the Council and Senate carry out oversight on academic standards and institutional fiduciary.
Olaopa explained the “all-of-people partnership model” as what puts governance in the hands of the stakeholders (those beyond internal university community constituents and government appointed representatives) and those that the university serves; those its decisions directly affect, namely, industry partners, community representatives, alumni, trade union leaders, among others..
“Within this framework, it means that university governance decisions will be evaluated not only by internal performance metrics, but also by public relevance, community integration, civic responsibility, and therefore the principles of shared governance and co-determination
The all-of-people funding ecosystem that this participatory and inclusive model will create, will therefore move the Nigerian higher education funding beyond reliance on unstable government budgetary allocations and static students’ tuition and other equity-restrained recovered costs, towards an integrated outcome-driven funding architecture.
“This financing model then aligns capital generation, resource allocation, and accountability directly, to create a balance between the interests of internal and external stakeholders. It thus builds financial resilience while ensuring transparent, impact-linked governance”.
He also proposed a community-backed equity-rooted endowment fund
that would entail restructuring the traditional endowment into a participatory, community-owned asset fund, into which alumni, local enterprise networks, and other CSO contribute capital.
“Such capital is targeted at university growth poles such as renewable energy micro-grids, digital infrastructure, agricultural research centres, etc. In return, investors and community co-owners receive fractional equity of structured revenue-sharing returns generated by university ventures and enterprises.
This model invariably transforms endowment into an active investment pool which embed communities directly into the economic success of the university.”
He added that to achieve the proposed governance and funding models would require the collaboration of
the National Assembly, Federal Ministry of Education, the National Universities Commission to amend the existing university establishment Acts to grant full operational and academic autonomy to universities.