ABSTRACT This study was carried out in North Central states of Nigeria. The main purpose of the study is to evaluate the human resource management practices in federal and state colleges of education in the North Central Zone of Nigeria. Seven research questions were posed and answered by this study and seven hypotheses were formulated and tested at P < 0.05 level of significance. Descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study was 572 consisting of 11 provosts, 11 deputy provosts, 11 registrars, 55 deans of schools, 322 heads of academic departments and 162 heads of nonacademic departments in the seven states and four federal colleges of education in northcentral zone of Nigeria, such as Bursary department, registry, public relation, library, security and department of Health services and so on. There was no sampling because of the manageable size of the population. However, four (4) provost, their principal officers, chairmen and secretaries of academic and non academic staff unions from four colleges of education which comprise 36 human resource managers were selected through disproportionate sampling technique were interviewed. A 66 item structured questionnaire titled “Evaluation of Human Resource Management Questionnaire (EHRMQ)” and an interview guide for human resource management comprise 6 items were developed based on literature reviewed and used for data collection. The instruments were face validated by five experts. The internal consistency of the questionnaire items was determined using cronbach alpha procedure and yielded the following reliability indices: 0.82, 0.75, 0.88, 0.94, 0.95, 0.94, and 0.90 for the seven sections of items in the questionnaire. Five hundred and seventy two copies of the questionnaire were administered to the respondents through eleven (11) research assistants. Five hundred and sixty nine (569) of 572 copies of the questionnaire administered were retrieved and used for analyses. Mean (X) and Standard Deviations (SD) were used to answer the research questions, while t- test was used to test the nullhypotheses. The results of the study revealed that the federal and state colleges of education in the north-central zone to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff recruitment, to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff training and development, to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff appraisals and promotions, to a little extent comply with approved guidelines on staff welfare practices and to a great extent comply with approved guidelines on staff discipline practices. A major problem of human resource management in both federal and state colleges of education is political interference in appointment of provosts which does not allow the best to emerge. It was recommended that: the provosts and other principal officers of the federal and state colleges of education should strictly comply with procedures for the recruitment of staff, appraisals and promotions exercises, staff training and development, staff welfare and discipline practices.
