Anifowose, Oluwafemi Dele, Rohana Ngah, Hasni Abdullah
The cut in government funding has put universities in Nigeria under severe financial strain and harmed the quality of education in the country's educational system. A partnership between students and staff has emerged as a viable option for alleviating this financial burden, having identified the challenges like inactive power dynamics, resource scarcity, and poor sustainability amidst the existing government funding mechanisms. This academic paper examines how a partnership between students and staff could help reduce the financial strain on Nigerian universities. Each of the eighteen universities involved have five students and five academic staff of separate focus groups, consolidated with the interview with one senior non-academic staff in each university (Federal, State and Private) in the six states of the southwestern of Nigeria. The literature review and qualitative research method through the use of interview (non-academic staff), focus group (student and academic staff) were incorporated with a research tool of MAXQDA and Happy Scribes software for codification, theming and transcription of data collected. The study highlights the benefits of student-staff partnerships in reducing financial stress and utilizing student and staff’s creative, innovative and human capital development, ultimately fostering more inclusive funding and empowered universities. It suggests that these partnerships can be successful in Nigeria, requiring institutional support and adequate infrastructure to bring this study outcome into truism. The study also offers recommendations for the universities’ stakeholders and administrators to increase resources, encourage creativity, and improve program quality by adopting this partnership strategy.