Educational - Ozean Publications

European Journal of Educational Studies 2(2), 2010of any enterprise. In the same vein, Adebayo (2000) and Akinwumi (2001) while emphasizing the place of resourcesin educational development submitted that steady provision and condition of resources will largely guarantee aneffective operation of the educational system.According to Olagboye (2004), resources can be classified into physical, material and human resources and alsosocial amenities. The physical resources are office accommodation, lecture rooms, libraries, laboratories, resourcecentres, common room, workshop among others, while material resources comprise current books and journals in thelibrary, stationeries, computers, internet facilities, furniture, laboratory apparatus among others. Human resourcesconsist of staff in the organisation. Social amenities comprise good road networks, portable water, regular and stableelectricity. The condition of these resources according to Olagboye goes a long way in facilitating and stimulatingany educational programme.Resource situation on the other hand basically is the availability and quality of the available resources (Akinfolarin,2007). It can also be described as a condition or the state of affairs of the allotted resources in an institution,especially at a certain time (Julius, 1989). The resource situation entails whether essential educational resources areavailable and also suitable for organisational activities.It has been observed over the years that the factors of age, ownership and type of universities appear to influenceresource situation in Nigerian universities. Age refers to the year of establishment of a particular university. Forinstance, Nigerian universities have been classified into first, second and third generation universities. Firstgeneration universities are universities established in the 40s, and 60s in Nigeria and they are six in number. The sixuniversities constitute Nigeria’s first generation universities. Second generation universities are universitiesestablished in the 70s and third generation universities are the universities established in the 80s, and majority ofthese universities are owned by state government (Okebukola, 1998).Basically age is related to the historical development of any university and the prevailing economic situation in thecountry at the period of establishing these universities. For instance, most of the first and second generationuniversities in Nigeria were established during the oil boom era in Nigeria (Shehu, 2005). The buoyant economypossibly translated to adequate funding with corresponding positive impact on resource situation of theseuniversities. This appears to make these universities better in terms of resource situation than the third generationuniversities that were established in the early 1980s when the economy became moribund and hence, no enough fundto make adequate provisions for the resources needed by these universities (Saint and Harnett, 2003).Yann (2002) further buttressed how university age affects academic staff job performance by opined that most stateuniversities, established in the early 1980s when the economy became moribund were the first in Nigeria todisappear from the research scene as a result of financial constraints, and operating today as second class teachinginstitutions with the exception of one or two. According to him, most of these universities have been cut off frominternational networks, scholars from these universities were forced to seek individually for alternative resources, orto withdraw from all research activities.Ownership is related to the issue of funding and control of the Nigerian University system by their proprietors.Funding appears very crucial for conducive resource situation in the university system. This is premised on theunderstanding that with adequate funding, more facilities can be provided in the university system. In Nigeria, thecurrent practice of political federalism without fiscal federalism, places the federal government at an advantage overthe various states in the federation. This development according to Oke (2001) and Awe (2009) has made therevenue allocation formula to be positively skewed in favour of the federal government, thus creating disparity in thelevel of funding of both federal and state universities in Nigeria. It therefore appears as if universities owned by thefederal government has better resource situation than the ones owned by the state government due to the seeminglyfinancial advantage of federal universities over state universities. It also seems as if specialized universities are betteroff in terms of resource situation than the conventional universities as a result of higher operational cost ofspecialized universities.The shift in attention towards technological advancement in Nigeria witnessed the establishment of specializeduniversities, such as universities of science and technology and universities of agriculture. It is observed thatspecialized universities are more capital intensive than the conventional universities. This may be due to equipmentand facilities that must be on ground before the universities can take off properly. Thus, it is likely that the priorityaccorded specialized universities could facilitate allocation of more resources to it, a development which may likelytranslate or lead to better resource situation. This is therefore to say that type of university may determine thesituation of resources in a given university.Conventional universities on the other hand are traditional universities that offer multidisciplinary courses in arts,social sciences, law, medicine, science among others. These universities are patterned after the British universitiesand most of the third generation universities fall into this category (Awe, 2009). The common feature of specializeduniversities is that they are expensive in nature due to capital expenditure on the equipment for training and research94