Abstract:

Education is undergoing a phenomenal change across all societies. Globalization has been an exceptionally powerful phenomenon that is facilitating the transfer of information and knowledge across continents. Developing countries with constrained resources are re-structuring their traditional curricula so as to gain the maximum benefit out of it, and this has created a fertile ground for a mutually beneficial north-south international collaborations. The Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program is an executive style collaborative program between the Yale University School of Public Health in the United States and the Jimma University School of Public Health in Ethiopia. The program was started at the initiative of the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia to train hospital CEOs and is an offshoot of a hospital management improvement collaboration the Ministry had previously forged with the Clinton Foundation. The program is structured so that 85% of the training is done within the hospitals, during which times the students provide periodic progress report and assignments electronically which are commented on by teaching faculty. Syllabi and pertinent teaching materials are made available on the school’s website and students are matched with mentors at both institutions to facilitate individualized assistance. On-site technical support for the CEOs is facilitated by the Clinton Foundation and site visits for monitoring progress has mainly been the responsibility of the program director, the regional health bureaus and the ministry of health. Fifteen percent of the CEOs’ training is allocated for didactics and is facilitated by faculty members from Jimma and visiting instructors from Yale University and its affiliates. This program is still relatively new and finding and retaining qualified educators continues to be a challenge however as a novel method of executive style education in a low income country it has tremendous potential to ameliorate the skills of a meager workforce while simultaneously offering western institutions a tremendous opportunity to compete in the global market.

Keywords:

Globalization, international collaboration, executive education, skill transfer.