Models of Funding University Education and Sustainable National Development

There is rising increase in the social demand for university education as well as frequent in agitations by unions in Nigerian universities for adequate funding. These agitations over improvement in the quality of staff welfare, quality of instruction, quality of environment, development of institutional infrastructures/instructional facilities and development of human resources in universities hinge under-funding pervading university educational institutions. It would be recalled that the Federal Government of Nigeria through the National Universities Commission (NUC) enjoin all public tertiary institution in the country to generate internally at least 10% of the funds required to carry out various education programmes in any fiscal year as government alone cannot shoulder the entire responsibility with her limited resources. The paper therefore focuses on the models of funding university education and sustainable national development. Consequently, some existing models of funding university education have been examined and assessed in the light of their advantages and disadvantages. It is concluded that the self-helping funding, which is also known as their internal revenue generation model is most impactful, and should be applied to complement the existing practice of state funding model of university education in Nigeria for sustainable national development.