Socio-political and economic issues relating to financing higher education is broadly deliberated and debated subject in many public mediums and academic gatherings in Nigeria, for over a decade to date. Altogether those deliberations and debates are grounded virtually on two basic principles of, financing adequacy and equitability. Inadequacy of education financing is blamed for the deterioration in the quality of education. Furthermore, inequitable resource allocation between federal and State universities in Nigeria forms part of the key issue in accomplishing efficiency of resource utilization which is missing in academic literatures addressing higher education financing in Nigeria. In the context of Nigeria, considering the practical experiences, especially in the operational mechanism of financing of Higher education, transparency and corruptions became a syndrome that ravishes the educational system. This study focuses on sources of higher education finance and the relative contribution of each source to educational development of the nation. At the same time, implications of the present financing mechanism on parity and efficiency of higher education if Outsourcing is introduced as an alternative source of funding in the subsector. This study examines the matters relating to Higher Education Financing at three levels; financial allocation, resources allocation and education output distribution. This study is exploratory cross sectional survey and collects both primary and secondary data from relevant literatures available. The study revealed that outsourcing is a means of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in higher institution and therefore serve as alternative means of financing higher education in broad and university education in particular. Therefore, this study recommends formal incorporation of outsourcing in financing of university education in Nigeria.

The wide adoption and implementation of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) principally hinges on the notion that it promotes the production of high quality financial information for investor's decision making in the current globalized world. However, IFRS adoption is stated to be associated with the problem of information overload. This paper examines this assertion within the Nigerian banking industry. Data is generated from the financial reports of thirteen banks quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at 31 st December, 2014, two years pre and post-IFRS adoption. Descriptive statistics is utilized to analyse the data and the paired sampled t-test statistics to test the hypotheses. The descriptive results reveal that on average, IFRS adoption cause a 31.6% increase in the length of financial reports with the accounting policies segment increasing by 95.3%, income statement by 84.6%, notes to the accounts by 70.2%, management discussion and analysis by 23.2%, cash flow statement by 13.3%, and statement of financial position by 9.7%. Only the others segments of the financial reports decrease by 10%. The results of the paired ttest shows that there is a significant difference in the overall length of information disclosed by Nigerian banks in the pre and post-IFRS adoption periods implying IFRS adoption led to information over load in the financial reports of Nigerian banks. Further investigation reveals that notwithstanding the increase in information disclosure, post-IFRS reporting is more decision relevant. The paper recommends that investors seeking investment opportunities in the post-IFRS regime should patronize financial analyst to guide their decision making and the regulatory authorities especially the Central Bank of Nigeria should discourage company directors from disclosing unnecessary information by regulating on the maximum number of pages in annual reports and accounts.

No abstract