In response to rising demands for more visible participation in the economic and social development activities of Nigeria, the federal universities system is confronted with new and broader challenges. The need for a large-scale expansion to meet the growing college-age population in a period of reduced fiscal capacity of government presents a worse-case scenario and a dire necessity for a strategic comprehensive planning program.
The focus of the study was to devise a planning model for Nigeria's system of federal universities. The design was a modified case study. Data sources included primary research sites, planning documents from higher education organizations, workshops, conferences, and contacts with planning administrators. The data were analyzed as they relate to the technical and process aspects of the model.
The devised model is an integrative planning program of linear structure whose constituent elements interplay and consist of: comprehensive diagnosis of the conditions of Nigeria's postsecondary education, definition of systemwide strategic visions and institutional level specialized functions, development of program priorities in major service areas of instruction, research and public service, identification of fiscal, human, physical and organizational resources, development of implementation structures which define specific planning activities, devising of standards and procedures for on-going appraisal of planning performance outcomes, and using the feedback for strengthening and continuing the repeatable planning process.
At the core of the model is a governance perspective that is a coexistence of a national level coordination and internal autonomy of each university. A centralized-decentralized planning design is advanced in the present circumstances of Nigeria's federal universities because it disciplines the central coordinating agency (the National Universities Commission) into a decision process based on publicly declared performance standards and imposes accountability practice on individual universities. The model posits a thematic frame of an on-going systematic planning program that is comprehensive in scope, methodology and vision as well as strategic and operational with an adaptive capacity to respond to problems, opportunities and resources as planning conditions dictate.
