Abstract
This study assessed the impact of economic hardship on teaching programme and research programme of Federal Universities in North-East Nigeria. We adopted descriptive survey research for the study. All academic staff in federal universities in North-east Nigeria were the population of the study. The sample size of the study was 260 academic staff. Proportionate stratified random sampling was employed to draw a sample size in the three selected public federal universities in the region. The researchers used questionnaire as instruments for the study. The reliability of ECQ was re-established to be 0.86 using Cronbach Alpha method. Method of data collection was on-the-spot with the aid of two research assistants. Simple linear regression associated with ANOVA was used to answer the research questions and test the hypotheses. The study disclosed that economic hardship has significant relationship with implementation of teaching programme in the federal universities in Nigerian North-East,this means that economic hardship affected implementation of teaching programme. Also, the study showed that there was significant relationship between economic hardship and research programme of Federal Universities in North-East Nigeria implying that economic hardship and inflation slowed down the implementation of research programme in the universities in Nigeria. Based on this finding, the paper recommends that federal and state government should increase the funding of the universities so that the administrators can meet up with the high operational cost of the universities in Nigeria. Federal and state government should increase the salaries of the universities staff and subsidize educational resources for both institutions and students to aid effective implementation of the teaching and research programme in the universities.