Innovative Means of Financing Tertiary Education for Sustainable National Development

Education improves the development of any society, hence the need for the educated ones to occupy significant positions in order to improve the society. One of the major problems now facing higher education in Nigeria is the problem of underfunding. At this crucial time in our nation‘s history, the education allocation remains the lowest 2011, in terms of amount. The funding has been regressive with each passing year. Political and socio-economical unrest globally has militated further the amount allocated to the educational sub sector as government resources are becoming critically scarce. The question of funding has needs to be addressed frankly since government alone cannot fund education. In this light therefore, for effective national development, there is need for optional funding of education for sustainable development in Nigeria. There is need for mobilization of external resources through appropriate bilateral agreements between government and external agencies in ways that will encourage them to contribute to the funding of tertiary education in Nigeria. New and alternate sources of funding higher education in Nigeria, the effects of inadequate funding and possible sources of funding is examined in this paper. These alternate sources among others include, subvention; Community investment: private Sector investment; Entrepreneur Venture; and the various forms of crowd funding i.e equity based crowd funding, lending based crowd funding, rewards and donations based crowd funding.