Kintum Mary Ugo & Dr Margaret Uga Oluwole
Abstract
Using descriptive survey, the study carried out an appraisal of the impact of economic recession on management of public tertiary institutions in South-South, Nigeria. The population of the study was 146,834 academic and non-academic staff in all the 44 public tertiary institutions in South-South Nigeria. A sample of 1,650 academic and non-academic staff was selected for the study using stratified and purposive random sampling techniques. The instrument for data collection was Economic Recession Appraisal and Management of Tertiary Institutions Questionnaire (ERAMTIQ) with 10 items on the two variables of the study. The instrument was validated and trial tested on 30 staff using Cronbach Alpha statistics and it yielded a reliability coefficient of 0.87. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation scores to answer the research questions. Chi-square was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study showed that economic recession has significant negative impact on staff motivation and payment of staff salaries in public tertiary institutions. The study recommended, among others, that the management of public tertiary institutions should strategize alternative ways of raising funds for the provision of adequate staff motivation in the face of economic recession.