Contributions and Challenges of Academic Planning Units in Nigerian Public Universities: Implication for Making Decision by Universities' Administrators

This paper looked at the contributions of academic planning units in Nigerian public universities and the challenges the units are facing. Qualitative and quantitative data were used in the paper. The data were collected from an online publication and print materials. The paper depends on primary and secondary data. The paper identified programme development, academic brief development, programme accreditation, effective data management, timely annual report preparation and timely academic calendar planning as major contributions of academic planning units to the sustainable development of the universities. The paper also concluded that lack of ICT facilities, poor funding, lack of cooperation with other units in the universities and ineffective training and retraining programme are the challenges some academic planning units in Nigerian universities are faced with. For sound policy measures, implementation and solutions, the paper hereby recommended that since academic planning is playing a crucial role in the development of the universities, the universities administrators should make provision for a constant training programme for the planners, provide the units with adequate ICT facilities, sensitize other units in the universities on the need to cooperate with the academic units and increase the impress allocation to the units for the effective administration of the units.