REDUCING RESOURCE DEPENDENCE ON GOVERNMENT FUNDING OF PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

This paper investigated how public universities can leverage their dependence on government 
funding. Organization of the paper began with an introduction that set forth the topic parameter and its 
rationale. This is followed by conceptual understanding of dependence and the issues therein. 
Government funding of public universities is fraught with so many challenges, such as fluctuations, 
cuts, regulations, and laws, which limit the conducts of public universities. In order to reduce public 
universities dependence on government funding, strategies by which they could gain greater resources 
were highlighted to include: university administrators to adapt management model to the needs of the 
external environment from which the university could draw various resources, influence the 
environment to improve their functioning conditions, build strong board to diversify revenues, 
strategic planning, working in unity to increase efficiency and effectiveness, etc. The work also 
pointed out some of the financial connectivity pathways like public university engagement on 
Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for profit making venture, setting up endowment support for 
programmes, collaboration with public/private partnership, attracting wealthy individuals to take up 
finance of capital projects to immortalize their names, establishment of non-proprietor funding 
sources and so on. Suggestions included that public universities should be made to charge tuition fees 
within government parameters and redesign policies that would enable public university system to be 
self-sustaining, amongst others. The paper concluded that implementing the suggestions can help to 
maintain financial stability, which will reduce public university dependence on government funding.