Globalisation and Knowledge Flight in Nigeria: Adekunle Ajasin University in Perspective

The paper examines the link between globalization and knowledge flight, encapsulating as emigration of lecturers and graduates of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko (AAUA), Nigeria abroad for postgraduate studies. It evaluates the worrisome and alarming rate at which Nigerians are trouping abroad for postgraduate studies at the detriment of the Nigerian Universities, where some programmes are affordable. This is not unconnected with the fact that some of the lecturers, who are privileged to study abroad for their higher degrees either via government’s sponsorship or their institution renege on their promise to come back after the completion of their studies. This, to an extent, has put their guarantors and the University in quandary. What seems to be an enigma to the attitudes of the beneficiaries is their inability to decipher the positive impacts of globalization against its negative posture. Expectedly, the issue of knowledge flight has gained currency in academic literature. What has not been sufficiently interrogated is the relationship between globalisation and knowledge flight, especially as it affects AAUA. Using documentary evidence, this study investigates the effects of globalisation on postgraduate studies and emigration of faculties in AAUA. This study discovers that availability of funding and scholarship is a major reason for the exodus of students and scholars from Adekule Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko to overseas for better education, coupled with insecurity, poor economy of the country, unemployment and irregular payment of salaries of staff sent on training and development programmes. It is within this purview that this paper suggests the need for proper re-orientation of the beneficiaries and graduates of Nigerian origin that the challenges of every generation could only be solved by those that belong to the generation. Hence, the need to be honest and more patriotic to the course of development of their nation.