Lack of Quality Higher Education in Ethiopia: Who Is
Responsible?
Dec 04, 2007
It is understandable that different people under different circumstances will employ different yardsticks to evaluate quality of education. Last night I was watching Barry Schwartz on TED Talks talking about Choice. He explains that as we have more choices and more freedom to choose, we set unnecessarily high expectations to the extent that makes our lives miserable. Moreover, he argues that when we have more choices and make better choices, we end up less satisfied than when we have fewer options to choose. He says everything is better when everything is worst.
I believe that this tendency is prevalent in our societies as we usually express it in our discourse: Dro Qare! Thus, there is a tendency among many people to believe that we had better education system in the past. Tmhrt Dro Qare!
Mr. Tedla Asfaw has made allegations that imply the source of the problems in the quality of Ethiopia’s higher education is TPLF (www.EthiopiaFirst.com and www.Nazret.com). Many studies have been done about the problems of Ethiopia’s education (including quality) over the years. All the stakeholders of education naturally contributed their impact on the problems of education. Governments are not exceptions. Interested individuals can consult the various studies so far conducted to have a complete understanding of the problems. The problems are not due to the fact that TPLF is on the scene. The major problems were there starting from the introduction of secular education. Any individual can mention any problem, and I am certain that I can show him/her that the problem was there, if not worst than it is now.
Nonetheless, we do not expect the general public to consult technical print media to understand the inherent problems of education in Ethiopia. Responsible and knowledgeable citizens have the responsibility to explain the status of our education system through the use of popular media. In turn, popular media have to be so careful to provide the correct, educating, and constructive information.
It is helpful to put the following excerpt from Mr. Tedla allegation about the problem of quality in Ethiopia’s higher education. He says “All the universities are now run by pro TPLF administrations and the lack of recruiting good teachers has not been possible after TPLF dismissed more than forty professors for their political believes more than fifteen years ago”. This will take me back to pre-1991 to see and pinpoint the major problems, to my understanding, of our education system in general and higher education in particular. I hope this will help me show that we didn’t have better system then by any standard.
First. The only independent nation in Africa, as we always brag about, had two universities and about a dozen colleges till the coming of TPLF. If we had a quality higher education before 1991, why would we have barely a dozen of tertiary education institutions? When we have a system or culture of education that doesn’t help even the most highly certified personnel to think outside the gates of Addis Ababa, we cannot talk about quality of education. It is a system of education that inculcates, more than anything else, the belief that Ethiopia = Addis Ababa.
Second. In the first decade of the 20th centaury, as secular education was introduced to Ethiopia, shortage of print material in Ethiopian languages (particularly Amharic) was one of the problems. After exactly 100 years (and about 50 years after the establishment of AAU), the same problem is persistent. This was a critical problem from the 1900s to 1930s. By the 1940s (after the Italian aggression was averted), the professors of the then should have done something about that. They didn’t do much. In fact nothing worth mentioning was done by 1950s, 1960s, 1970, and 1980s. A multitude of other national problems were simply given no attention. As the new comers arrived in Addis in the morning of May 20, 1991, they came with a system that not only would require the then professors to do something about the lack of print material but also obliged them to make a radical overhaul to reach the Ethiopian masses. The professors fought back vehemently rejecting the new system. Even though they lost the battle, they were left to run a system they hate. As long as the influence of those elites (directly or indirectly) is kicking, the problem of our education system will not be solved easily and early.
Third. The most important problem of the pre-1991 education systems is their role in promoting brain drain. As far as Ethiopia is concerned, we have two types of brain drain. The first one, as we all are well aware of, is transnational brain drain. And the second one is rural-urban brain drain. The pro-poor pro-rural politico-economic policies of EPRDF naturally would reverse the rural-urban brain drain. This was the greatest threat to the urbanite elites who hold the education system hostage for nearly five decades (1940s to 1980s). What we see today is the same urbanite elites blaming the government for the problems they themselves created in the first place or failed to fix before it was too late. When the government gets into the job with full gear, the urbanite elites shade their crocodile tears in the name of quality. This is blame game.