Comparative Study Of Lecturers' Wellbeing In Public And Private Universities And Job Performance In Cross River State

<div> <p>This study examined the comparative differences in lecturers' wellbeing and job performance between public and private universities in Cross River State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study appraised five dimensions of lecturers' wellbeing employers' policy, workload, strike action, job security, and incentive package as predictors of job performance differentials across institutional types. Persistent poor job performance among university lecturers in Nigeria, manifesting in inadequate instructional delivery, limited research engagement, and recurrent industrial disputes, provided the empirical motivation for the inquiry. The study was grounded in Herzberg's Motivation Two-Factor Theory (1959) and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory (1943), and adopted a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. The target population comprised 2,471 lecturers and heads of departments from the University of Calabar (public) and Arthur Jarvis University (private) in Cross River State, from which a proportionate sample of 181 respondents was selected through the hat-and-draw and simple random sampling techniques. Data were collected using two researcher-developed instruments: the Lecturers' Wellbeing Questionnaire (LWQ, α = 0.86) and the Job Performance Questionnaire (JPQ, α = 0.84), both of which were validated by educational measurement experts. Research questions were addressed using independent samples t-test, while the five null hypotheses were tested at the 0.05 level of significance using one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), with post hoc comparisons conducted via Tukey's HSD. Findings revealed statistically significant inter-institutional differences across all five wellbeing dimensions in their relationship with job performance: employers' policy (F = 43.385, p = .000), lecturers' workload (F = 10.023, p = .003), strike action (F = 20.234, p = .000), job security (F = 11.085, p = .002), and incentive package (F = 21.593, p = .000). All five null hypotheses were consequently rejected. It was concluded that lecturers' wellbeing differs significantly between public and private universities in Cross River State, and that these differences exert a measurable influence on academic job performance. The study recommends that government and university management prioritise the formulation of lecturer-friendly institutional policies, recruit additional academic staff to alleviate workload burden, strengthen tenure and job security frameworks, and restructure incentive packages to adequately reflect lecturers' professional contributions, as prerequisite conditions for sustainable improvement in university-level instructional quality and academic output.</p> </div>