Deregulation of Universities and Economic Efficiency in Nigeria: Available Options
Odunayo Adewale Henry

Abstract
The paper examines the deregulation of universities as it affects the Nigerian economy in recent time. The establishment of universities all over the world has been a highly capital intensive project. Basically, university education calls for a pedagogical commitment to the funding. Navigating through university funding remains a financial challenge to the proprietors. Nigeria is made up of six geo-political zones namely: North-West, North- East, North-Central, South-South, South-East, and South-West. Thus, a purposive simple random sampling method was adopted. South-West geo-political zone was selected out of which two public universities and two private universities were selected. 250 participants were randomly selected to fill the instrument in each of the universities, in all a total of 800 students, 100 academic and 100 non-academic staff responded to the research instrument. As a descriptive research design, it makes use of some indicators for measuring the state of the economy and university education in Nigeria. Data were collected through the use of a validated questionnaire tagged University Deregulation and Economy Performance Questionnaire (UDEPQ) with a reliability coefficient of r = 0.82. The result shows that there is a significant effect of deregulation of university education on the Nigerian economy. The implication of this is that the quality indicator of the Nigerian university system is enriched by the deregulation policy which is equally what is obtainable in the developed nations. Based on the results, recommendations were provided such thah the proprietors of Universities in Nigeria should provide adequately efficient and effective active and passive factors needed for economic development of the nation.

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