This paper examined the influence of lecturers’ performance appraisal on total quality management of public universities in South-Western Nigeria. The study cuts across all public universities in South-west Nigeria. It adopted a descriptive research design. Three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 alpha level. Random sampling technique was used to select 500 lecturers from the ranks osenior lecturers to professors in all the universities. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to analyze the data collected. At the end of the study, it was revealed that there are significant relationship among establishing performance standard, communicating performance standard to the lecturers, assessing lecturers by annual performance appraisal and total quality management in public universities. It was recommended amongst other things that management must ensure the assessment of lecturers’ performance thoroughly and continually in order to improve quality in the lecturers and bring about overall total quality management in public and private universities.
Keywords: Appraisal, Higher Education, Management, Performance, Public Universities, Total quality