Assessment of Stakeholders' Readiness for Financial Resources Generation Under the New Higher Education Policy in (Anglo-Saxon) Public Universities in Cameroon

The study assessed stakeholders’ readiness for the implementation of the New Higher Education Policy (NHEP) on financial resources in the Anglo-Saxon Public Universities (APU) of Bamenda (UBa) and Buea (UB) in Cameroon. The study was guided by two research objectives two hypotheses relating to readiness for implementation of tuition and related fees, and production of income generation goods in both institutions as spelt out in section 61 of the NHEP. The researcher adopted a concurrent sequential design. The population of the study constituted 208,554 stakeholders and a convenient sample size of 384 adopted through a combination of the Krejcie and Morgan formular stratified purposive and snowball sampling techniques. A structured questionnaire tagged - Anglo-Saxon Public Universities Stakeholders Questionnaire (APUS-Q) and an interview guide were used as instruments for data collection. Descriptive (mean scores, percentages, and standard deviation) and inferential (independent t-test) statistics were used in data analysis. An institutional comparative analysis revealed the following results: stakeholders’ of UBa and UB were readiness to implement tuition and related fees as spelt out in the new policy. UBa appeared more ready with approval rating of 70.05% as against 29.95% disapproval rating - representing a mean score readiness of (x̄ = 28.177; SD = 4.5159). While UB had an approval rating of 65.73% as against 34.27% disapproval rating – representing a mean score readiness of (x̄ = 27.075, SD = 4.3355). There was a statistically significant difference in mean score readiness between UBa and UB (t = 2.330 and p-value = 0.020), thereby rejecting the null hypothesis. Results on both institutions readiness to produce income generation goods showed that UB appeared relatively ready with an approval rating of 56.3% as against 43.7% disapproval rating - representing an overall mean score readiness of (x̄ = 27.061; SD = 4.0540). On the contrary, UBa indicated not ready for this with an approval rating of 36.4% as against 63.6% disapproval rating – representing a mean score readiness of (x̄ = 20.701, SD = 3.8471). The t-value (-14.938) and P-value (0.000), showed a statistically significant difference in the mean score readiness of UBa and UB thereby rejecting the null hypothesis. The study overall recommended an absolute decentralised approach to public university management especially those operating under the Anglo-Saxon tradition in order to avoid bureaucratic barriers to the implementation of the new higher education policy within the Cameroon.