Quality over quantity

“No republic can endure unless its citizens are literate and educated.”
Horace Mann, Educator

The day when Ethiopia manages to formulate consistent and lasting policies is when our many problems will start to evaporate like morning mist. Our country, throughout its history, has never been overly blessed with the steady guidance of enduring structures or for that matter, farsighted lawmakers.
A prime example of the above categorization is the current sorry state of affairs in higher education, which is posing the danger of the creation of parallel education systems in Ethiopia.
It is an undeniable fact that the EPDRF led government has done better than expected in many sectors of economic, social and political life. The phenomenal expansion of the national road network, the development in telecommunication and the rapid rise of foreign trade, these and other achievements are to be commended. Unfortunately, (there is always a 'but'…after such high praise) it's a big but (pun unintended) because the system of education, the very pillar that can sustain the recorded economic growth, is chronically sick after ailing for the last 30 plus years. The EPDRF's educational policy has simply treated the invalid with only superficial bandages such as allowing near complete de-regulation of higher education. Today, private college 'graduates', their financially suffering parents, educators, investors and yes, the government itself, feel undone by a system that has gone hay-wire.
There are approximately 60 privately owned institutions of so called higher education in Ethiopia - all boasting various levels of accreditation by the Ministry of Education. These colleges graduate thousands more students than government institutions and have raised the national college intake several fold. However, the graduates face dwindling opportunities for employment as both the private sector and state enterprise hesitate to employ them.
Sad as it is that state employers would rather not hire graduates of institutions that have been accredited by the state itself, this hesitancy to employ applicants trained in private colleges has finally exposed the massive incompetence (long a part of conventional wisdom) of the majority of private colleges.
The private press, including this publication, have exhaustively reported and devoted numerous editorials about the reckless and quasi-unregulated proliferation of private institutions of higher learning, a situation endlessly promoted by the state as a sign of the nation's liberalization and the expansion of education. The fact is however, that the quantitative approach to education is failing miserably. The onus rests on the policy formulating authorities, educators and the business oriented so called investors in the education sector, to clean up the mess.
Perhaps, as a stop-gap measure; students, parents, employers and the nation at large can benefit if the state publishes a list of approved private colleges as surely, they cannot all be tarnished with the same brush.
Additionally, those that have adjustable shortcomings should be given strict guidelines and a set deadline to clean up their act or face closure. Those that are beyond repair should shutter their gates as soon as possible.
In the final analysis, the controversy of whether private colleges graduate employable citizens or not is not in itself a bad thing.
It may be that a very welcome process of 'survival of the fittest' has arrived when solid quality will triumph over hollow quantity.