| Of all the issues and trends facing higher education in Nigeria, the academic turnover commonly referred as "Brain drain" is more pronounced. It continues to deplete the professoriate with its distinctive wealth of academic expertise. Exacerbating the brain drain issues is the fact that higher education in Nigeria has been incapacitated by political instability and poor macroeconomic management of educational resources. As such, the economic interplay of demand, supply, and resource allocation has been stunted and has failed to increase focus on the values of the professoriate. Unfortunately, this depletion of the professoriate critically undermines the ability of institutions to sustain growth, produce skilled and qualified human capital needed for national development, and maintain various academic priorities. To make matters worse, the return rate of Nigerians who studied and obtained PhD's in foreign universities is critically disappointing and there is also a decline in graduate and postgraduate enrollment in local universities. Consequently, staffing the universities with competent and qualified professors becomes extremely difficult. Since higher education supports the entire educational systems by promoting greater social cohesion in the academe and community, it becomes very imperative to mobilize the resources needed to improve the brain drain issues. This project examines how best to sustain the effectiveness and responsiveness of higher education, by utilizing applicable qualitative research methods to review efforts designed to reduce the brain drain issues through improved educational opportunities and strategic management approaches. |
