The Effect of Modes of Funding on the Performance of Zimbabwe State Universities: Incites from Administrators

The study investigated the different sources of funding available to State Universities in Zimbabwe and their effect on universities performance. The Universities’ performance was defined to mean teaching and learning, research, community services, innovation and industrialization which is defined by the Heritage based Education 5.0. The Zimbabwean Universities had in the twenty first century been underperforming ever since the massification of students. There has been inadequate infrastructure, poor remuneration, research apathy, unequipped laboratories, among other evidence of poor funding of public universities in the country. The researcher implore the shift of public funding referred to as first stream income or government funding to other funding sources and how they affect university performance over the years. Over the years the ranking of Universities in Zimbabwe has been declining due to poor performance. The quantitative study using a semi-structured researcher designed questionnaire was used to gather data from University Administrators of ten state Universities in the country using stratified random sampling. For analysis, the gathered data was coded, arranged in spreadsheets, and imported into the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, Version 29.0). The data was analysed using descriptive statistics like mean and standard deviation. To determine the link between the independent and dependent variables, correlation and regression analysis were performed. Tables and graphs were used to display the data.