Abstract:

This study attempts to look at the quality and relevance of Public Universities and its implications for attaining GTP goals. As well known, trained labor force is a necessary condition for socio-economic growth and competitiveness of a nation. Cognizant of this fact, the Ethiopian government has ratified and implemented several legal and policy frameworks (see the 1994 Education and Training Policy (ETP), 2003 & 2009 higher education proclamations, the 2008 Strategy and Conversion Plan, ESDPs I-IV). As a result, the higher education system has expanded and diversified in order to meet the highly trained labor force need of the country. At present, there are about 31 public universities in the country, which account for 83% of the total higher education enrollment. Following the recent five year (2011-2015) Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), the higher education landscape of the country has been further focused in favour of science and technology programs. As the overall government’s planning framework, the goal of GTP for higher education is to attain an undergraduate enrolment from 185, 788 in 2010 to 467,445 in 2015 while improving quality. The paper is based on two arguments. Firstly, I argue that quality of education is threatened in the public universities by many interrelated problems, particularly in the areas of science and technology. The second concerns the argument that enrolment expansion by itself is not sufficient to address the educated labour force needs of the economy as indicated in GTP, unless quality and relevance are reinforced in the higher education system. These and related issues were examined in this paper using an exploratory research method. Data were collected from two public universities by employing interview and documentary analyses. The findings indicated that the sampled public universities are yet to respond to the manpower requirements of GTP in terms of relevance and quality. The findings suggest that attention need to be paid for aligning universities’ programs and GTP manpower requirement within the remaining lifespan of GTP. This can be done through enforcing quality and relevance regulations and resources. Finally, implications for policy options regarding the current expansion and the level of quality and relevance are discussed.

Keywords:

Quality, Relevance, public University, Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP).