MANAGING EMPLOYEES IN HIGHER EDUCATION TRANSFORMATION: EXPLORING THE GOAL OF VISION 10: 2022 OF COVENANT UNIVERSITY, NIGERIA

Education is a tool of high value to the welfare of any society as it is crucial to the resolution of complex problems and development challenges in the world today. It is therefore, important that universities present just and adequate view of it as regard developmental needs. It is in this regard that, Covenant University (CU) has set out to achieve the goal of transforming higher education by becoming one of the best ten universities in the world in the year, 2022 (otherwise known as Vision 10:2022). To this end, CU has continued to put in place structures to support pragmatic teaching, research and community development. The vision is considered relevant when situated in the context of the current state of higher education, not just in Nigeria, but in Africa as a continent where graduates have been observed to be ‘half-baked.’ In pursuing a vision of this magnitude engaged in by CU; and no matter how laudable it could be, the role of employees (at all levels) cannot be over-emphasized. This is important because organizations can hardly grow beyond the quality and support of their workforce. It is important to learn as much as possible about them with a view to wining their support due to the need to have them ‘buy-in’ into the vision for actualization. Thus, the objective of this study is to investigate the preparedness of the employees to accept the CU vision and the factors that would significantly motivate the desired level of acceptance. The study will utilize data to be collected from a randomly selected sample of both academic and managerial employees of the university. Thereafter, regression analysis will be performed to identify the determinants of acceptance of the goal of higher education transformation among the employees as it relates to CU’s vision 10:2022.