DEREGULATION OF EDUCATION SERVICES: AN ENABLING TOOL IN ENHANCING QUALITY ASSURANCE IN UNIVERSITIES IN NIGERIA
Abstract
The study investigated the influence of the Deregulation of Education Services on Quality Assurance in Federal and State Universities in South-South, Nigeria. Two research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The study population was 824 academic administrators concerned with administrative services in Federal and State Universities in South-South Nigeria. There was no sampling, the census technique was employed (the whole population was used because the population was manageable). The instrument for data collection was researcher researcher-developed questionnaire titled “Deregulation of Educational Services and an Enabling Tool for Quality Assurance Questionnaire” (DESETQAQ). The instrument was validated by three experts, one in Measurement and Evaluation from Science Education and two from the Educational Foundations Department, all in Kampala International University Uganda. The reliability coefficient of the instrument is 0.822. Statistical mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were tested using a t-test at 0.05 alpha level of significance with the help of SPSS. The study found among others that: deregulation of the provision of educational services negatively influences the quality of staff but does not negatively influence the provision of teaching facilities in Federal and State universities in South-South, Nigeria while the hypotheses revealed that there were significant differences in the opinions of the respondents on how deregulation educational services influence the quality of staff and provision of teaching facilities in Federal and State universities in South-South Nigeria. Based on the study's findings, the researcher recommended that Federal and State Governments in the South-South Zone of Nigeria should only support but not interfere in the recruitment of staff and consolidate the provision of teaching facilities for quality assurance.
