by Concerned Educators[*]
June 2015
Introduction
Since the introduction of modern education in Ethiopia, Ethiopians have recognized the need to improve the quality of education. Ethiopians have never been, however, as concerned about the poor quality of education in Ethiopia as today. The cycle of poor quality education and its ripple effects are looming dangers for Ethiopia. The problem is systemic and mainly intentionally induced. Addressing this issue should be one of the top priorities for Ethiopians and those international organizations funding the education sector in Ethiopia. The crux of this analysis is to identify the root cause of the poor quality of education.
Quality of Education
One cannot talk about quality of education without taking into account the ultimate and legitimate stakeholders of education and the problem that the education system is established to solve. The stakeholders are those for whom the education sector is established to serve. Quality of education refers to the level of satisfaction of the stakeholders with the education provided. A quality of a product or service differs depending on the customers’ or stakeholders’ needs or demands. Schools and colleges can be seen as service providers. The quality goal is about why we do what we are supposed to be doing. Therefore, it is the value added as a result of learning which creates satisfaction of the ultimate stakeholders or meets their needs or expectations.
It is widely believed, in principle, that an education system in any country is designed to serve the learners, the parents of the students, the employers of the school graduates, the public at large, and eventually the nation. The benefits of quality education also transcend national boundaries and help to make our world a better and peaceful place. The teachers, faculty, administrators, and staff also have a stake in the quality of education, as they are the major role players, to enhance the quality of education. The ultimate goal is why we need education, or what are the changes of condition we want to achieve through education. In Ethiopia, however, there is deliberate mismatch between the needs of the stakeholders and what the government is accomplishing through the public education.
Quality of Education to the EPRDF Regime
In the Ethiopian context, most of schools, colleges, and universities are funded and operated by the government. The Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) dictates how the school and university systems should be organized and administered. The dictatorial regime assumes to be the sole stakeholder of the education sector in the country. Then the functions of the schools and colleges have become serving only the interests and accomplishing the goals of the single political party that has been in power since 1991. EPRDF is using educational institutions to propagate its party ideology and to achieve narrowly focused and partisan goals. Getting what the despotic regime wants, however, does not necessarily mean getting what Ethiopians need.
The government is not focused on and accountable for what matters to the primary stakeholders. Those who should have been legitimate stakeholders of education, such as students, parents, employers, teachers, faculty, and the taxpayer citizens, are excluded from the decision-making process. As the famous educator Paulo Freire proclaimed, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects.” The rulers implemented a top-down approach in the hasty development of education and training policy, the curriculum design, the expansion and opening of schools and universities, the organization of educational institutions, the staffing of the schools, and the appointment of educational leaders. For the dictatorial regime, as has become evident in its practice, quality education is that which creates loyalty to the tyrants and which satisfies its political motives regardless of the needs of students, parents, employers, and citizens.
As Human Right Watch reported, to access public sector jobs and services, EPRDF party membership is a necessary condition. While in college, students are required to be EPRDF members; otherwise they will not be given employment opportunities in the public sectors. What matters for the regime is not their academic excellence, technical competencies, or ethical behavior. The most important of all is blind loyalty to the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF), which was formerly known as Marxist-Leninist League Tigray (MLLT). Loyalty to TPLF is the most important criterion on the demand side of the government dominated job market in Ethiopia. The schools and colleges are forced to meet this demand of the regime and to make it their priority task.
The regime controls the land, which is the livelihood of Ethiopian subsistence farmers and the source of wealth in the cities. The TPLF and its army-ownedconglomerates control the businesses. The qualities required by the government, who is the major employment provider, are conforming to the following demands of TPLF: obedience, unquestioning loyalty to TPLF, and mediocrity. These are not the critical skills and competencies needed by the majority of Ethiopians, who represent the legitimate and ultimate stakeholders of education. The role of education should be beyond serving the interest of tyrants.
The current education system is organized to create a dependency syndrome. It is producing youth that can easily be manipulated by TPLF cadres and who always depend on the party for their livelihood. These are the goals that the regime has been working to achieve; and these are what the schools and colleges are set up by the government to accomplish. Thus, these are the tacit output measures of the education sector for the sole stakeholder of education, the tyrannical regime. No matter what changes are made on the input side, these quality goals of the regime drive every other activity, such as hiring teachers, designing curriculum, and appointing educational leaders. TPLF eliminates those who recognize and try to address this problem.
Education to Silence Citizens
Any normal human being understands the power of education. Education transforms lives positively. Education is key to fight poverty and ignorance. Education is power. Education liberates the human mind and empowers individuals and nations. One of the most important tools that frees us from the shackles of tyranny is quality education. Good education helps to develop ethical behavior. Quality education raises active civic participation and fosters dialogue on various issues that affect the lives of citizens. Quality education also helps to build strong and peaceful country where democratic rights are exercised and the rule of law is respected. The Ethiopian education and training policy stipulates that one of its objectives is “to provide education that can produce citizens who stand for democratic unity, liberty, equality, dignity, and justice, and who are endowed with moral values.” What we see in practice, however, is quite the opposite.
The education system is being used to inculcate party ideology, terrorize the young generation, and suppress freedom of thinking. The education system has been used to silence dissent in Ethiopia more than ever. ProfessorDonald Levine eloquently addressed the issue of academic freedom in Ethiopia. The initial motto of the Haile Selassie I University, was from 1 Thessalonians 5:21, “… ሁሉን ፈትኑ መልካሙን ያዙ ” “…test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.” The university that started in 1950 with this motto, making academic freedom its priority, is now depriving students, teachers, and faculty of their God-given right to freely think and express their ideas. Teachers and faculty who are critical of the government’s misguided policy and who stood for academic freedom are fired from their jobs. Students who oppose the divide-and-rule policy of the regime are killed.
The crackdown on those who express dissent has continued since the government security forces fired on unarmed Addis Ababa University students on January 4, 1993. Subsequently, the regime fired 42 Addis Ababa University professors. The reason given by the then Minister of Education, Gunet Zewdie, for dismissing the professors, was that the faculty were incompetent. On the contrary, the dismissed faculty were among the finest Ethiopian scholars the country had. Recently, she repeated her allegation saying that they were “unfit”. For her and the regime, intellectuals who are not in lockstep with TPLF policy are not qualified to teach and to conduct research. Many of the dismissed faculty left the country; they are serving other countries while Ethiopia is suffering from lack of academicians. The government security forces also assassinated the vocal Acting Director of Ethiopian Teachers’ Union Assefa Maru in the daylight on May 8, 1997 in Addis Ababa. The accomplished surgeon Professor Asrat Woldeyes languished in TPLF prison and died. The President of Ethiopian Teachers’ Association (ETA), Dr. Taye Woldesemayat, suffered for 6 years in the notorious prison and left the country. Teachers who are critical of EPRDF or who are members of opposition party risk their lives and live under constant threat and they are gripped by fear.
As Amnesty International reported, “The government used multiple channels and methods to enforce political control on the population, including politicizing access to job and education opportunities and development assistance, and high levels of physical and technological surveillance.” The repression of teachers by EPRDF reached to the level that causes self-immolation. As Bloomberg recently reported a teacher named Getahun Abraham whose application for transfer to another school was rebuffed by the government because of his membership in the opposition party doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire to death in the government office compound. The note he left behind reads, “being in politics shouldn’t get you punished this much.” In November 2011, BBC reported that another teacher, Yenesew Gebre, self-immolated and did the same protesting the ongoing crackdown on dissent.
Following the 2005 election, the TPLF security force massacred 193 peaceful protestors, in Addis Ababa ordered by the late Prime Minster Meles Zenawi. During the crackdown on student protestors at Ambo University, in May 2014,BBC reported that a witness in Ambo saw more than 20 bodies on the street, while Voice of America (VOA) reported that at least 17 protesters were killed. Recently, three outspoken faculty, Professor Merara Gudina, Dr. Kassahun Berhanu and Dr. Dagnachew Assefa, were forced to leave their teaching job at Addis Ababa University. Many experienced faculty and researchers in the higher learning institutions are leaving the profession because of the grim working conditions and lack of academic freedom. For instance, the faculty at the College of Health Sciences, Addis Ababa University, stay on the job on average for only 4.9 years.
The circumstances in schools in smaller cities and rural villages are worse. The minds of Ethiopian students, teachers, and faculty are imprisoned. This ultimately stifles civic participation and creates an environment of fear where dictators manipulate the citizens. Teachers and students are always under surveillance. For the rulers, the purpose of education is to create a generation that does not question authority and that worships the dictators as divine powers. TPLF suspended students’ government. The regime is using education to create a culture of submission, fear and silence so that the citizens cannot challenge the status quo. TPLF manages to do this because it controls every sector of the economy, the land, and government agencies. It is the major employer of school leavers; and the youth are at the mercy of TPLF dictators.
In Ethiopia – one of the top jailers of independent journalists, where there is no free press, where internet and foreign media are censored and spied by the government, where civic organizations are barred – at least schools and colleges should have been places for free expression of ideas. Students and teachers are organized in what is called one-to-five spying cells and they are forced to be TPLF informants and spy on one another. Student and teachers are muzzled. Imprisoning the minds of young Ethiopians and restrictions on freedom of expression have far-reaching effects. The scariest thing is such a tyrannical system creates a young generation that does not know how to settle difference peacefully and that tends to turn to violent approaches when the dictators are removed. This ultimately endangers the existence of peaceful and united Ethiopia.
While suppressing any dissent, modeling itself after Chinese Communist Party, the TPLF leaders tell citizens that what Ethiopians deserve is “revolutionary democracy”; thereby the rulers always decide what is good for the citizens. The citizens do not decide for themselves. The authoritarian EPRDF recently claimed to have won every single parliamentary seat. In spite of this fact, some foreign diplomats like the US State Department’s undersecretary of state for political affairs, Ms. Wendy Sherman, turns a blind eye to the repressions and declares that, “Ethiopia is a democracy.” The Ethiopian government’s argument is that the public is not conscious enough to exercise its right. This is an insult to Ethiopia – one of the ancient nations and that has a long-lived tradition of leadership and conflict resolution practices. The rulers also try to justify their suppression by claiming that they are providing access to education to the disadvantaged parts of the country and reaching the millennium goals.
Access without Success
The regime is boosting the number of schools, colleges, enrollments, and college graduates partly due to external demands by the funding agencies. The number of schools and colleges has increased and the government has been receiving foreign aid to expand access and at the same time to reward its cronies with lucrative business deals, such as construction. Access to education without success is for political consumption and to get foreign aid.
Ethiopia is the second top development aid recipient in Africa. From 2011 to 2013, Ethiopia received 10.62 billion dollar official development assistance (ODA), which is more than what the previous military regime received in 17 years. This amount is more than the total federal government’s annual budget. The more repressive the government becomes, the more aid it is getting. The party loyalists are embezzling the fund and enriching themselves. In the past, Ethiopian budget year alone, from the budget allocated to federal institutions, over two billion Birr remained unaccounted. Most of the misappropriation is done in the Ministry of Education and public universities.
The regime admits that the quality of education is deteriorating because of the expansion. The World Bank also confirms this. However, the rulers and funding agencies do not try to identify the root cause of the problem. Along with the increased emphasis on quantity, there has not been increased and genuine interest in assessing the performance of the schools and colleges to enhance quality. The government has established the Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA). This agency is not independent to critically evaluate the quality of education in Ethiopia. “It exists in name only”. It is established to justify the claims of TPLF. According to Dr. Philip Rayner and Professor Kate Ashcroft, who served as management advisors to the Minister of Education and the State Minister for Higher Education, HERQA’s evaluation or audit reports are not public. Thus, Ethiopian taxpayers do not have access to the documents and do not know the performance or standards of the colleges and universities.
The international agencies such as British Department of International Development, World Bank and USAID that are funding the education sector are not truly committed to improving the quality of education, which is empowering individuals and the nation. They are rather overly focused on easily measurable quantitative indicators such as enrollments, number of
graduates, number of schools and colleges, and other input variables. They have not had the courage to see the qualitative measures, such as focus on ultimate stakeholders’ needs, teaching learning process, academic rigor, qualification of teachers and administrators, academic freedom, institutional autonomy, motivation and commitment of teachers and faculty, transparency, accountability, ethics, academic integrity, satisfaction of stakeholders, and most importantly, student learning outcomes or evidence of students’ learning. A comprehensive study conducted on Ethiopian higher education found out that the major problems were lack of institutional autonomy and the use of political criteria by the government to control the institutions. “Ethiopia’s political landscape remains a minefield for education professionals”. What is the merit of giving more access if the educational institutions are used to suppress the fundamental human rights of the participants and teachers? The educational institutions are rather serving the regime as a large prison system to quash any dissent and critical thinking.
What is the worth of educational credentials awarded by the colleges and universities if they are not ultimately improving the lives of the graduates and the public? The colleges are preparing youth to enter the world of unemployment and underemployment. The Voice of America (VOA) Amharic Service on April 24, 2015, conducted an interview with Getachew Hadish, Daniel Hadish’s older brother. According to Getachew Hadish, Daniel Hadish, who graduated a year ago with a Computer Science degree from Jima University and who was heinously murdered by the terrorist ISIL in Libya, said, “I am unsuccessful here [in Ethiopia], I decided to leave the country; I have received the degree, but as you can see, it is worthless.” What is the value of a college education for a needy Ethiopian if it is not preparing the graduate for a gainful employment?
The Regime Deliberately Driving Down the Quality of Education
For political gains, the current regime in Ethiopia is systematically and strategically driving the quality of education down. The massification of education is to produce party loyalists, to please the donor organizations and it is for political consumption. “A lot of the time the universities are merely shells. They do not function as universities as we would expect and are poorly resourced, and in some cases shoddily built. It would seem that they are built almost as a token where the EPRDF can say to hostile regions ‘look we are doing something for you, we’ve built a university’.” The regime is only interested in increasing enrollment and count of institutions. These are the metrics of success for EPRDF. Other quality indicators, such as preparation for career and further studies, and others like acquisition of critical skills that the students need for life, are not the focus of the regime. The metrics set by the regime drive what the students, the educational institutions and their leaders must focus on. As Dan Ariely put it, “if we want to change what they [leaders of organizations] care about, we should change what we measure.… Human beings adjust behavior based on the metrics they’re held against. Anything you measure will impel a person to optimize his score on that metric. What you measure is what you’ll get.” The TPLF-led EPRDF is getting what it wants: mere increase in enrollment and count of educational institutions. The rhetoric about quality education by the regime is a hypocrisy.
The TPLF leaders have a double standard on quality of education. It is widely believed that the EPRDF rulers understand the potential of quality education and the capacity of educated citizens. Vitiating the quality of education by EPRDF is not because the rulers do not know the benefits of education, or it is not because they are so ignorant. It is not to give access to the underserved or disadvantaged Ethiopians either. What the regime is doing is a discriminatory and intentional act. Good education enables students to be creative, innovative, and resilient. The top rulers personally know that providing quality education, given a level playing field, empowers individuals and could potentially give the individuals the upper hand in the competitive world. The tyrants recognize that well educated citizens can be threats to their absolute power.
One of the evidences for this deliberate act is that, recognizing the power of education, TPLF established some selective model schools in the areas it favors. The rulers are sending their children to elite and expensive universities abroad. The cases in point are the children of Meles Zenawi, Aboy Sibhat, Gunet Zewdie, Hailemariam Desalegn, etc. The TPLF rulers are sending their children to American and European schools embezzling the hard-earned Ethiopian foreign currency and using Ethiopian taxpayers’ money. Many Ethiopians who live in these countries witness this fact. These dictators are following their counterparts in China. The Chinese Premier Xi Jinping’s daughter is studying at Harvard, not in China.
The TPLF rulers are preparing to sustain their reign and to claim their children are the best-educated ones and they deserve to be the next Ethiopian rulers following their parents’ footsteps. The other evidence is that the current Ethiopian rulers are buying degrees from diploma mills to dwarf their puppets and to seemingly raise their credibility. When they buy the degrees, the rulers know that it is not to get the intended and honest benefits of education, but just to legitimize their power through unearned educational credentials. There have been many reports exposing the unearned educational credentials of the top EPRDF officials. Some of the officials were Abadula Gemeda, Mekonnen Haddis, Constantinos Berhe, Arkebe Ekubay, among others.
In many countries where there is the rule of law, citizens run for public offices because they believe they have proven experiences in leadership, and because they believe to have the qualities and education that qualify them for the positions. On the contrary, in Ethiopia, the potentates claim to earn educational credentials because they hold political positions. These unearned credentials from Civil Service College and foreign diploma mills are creating bad precedents and the practice is spreading throughout the country, including non-government educational institutions. Many people are getting degrees without meeting the requirements of the credentials. Many have also been defrauded. These bogus certificates are used to cling to the political positions. For some engaged in businesses, the certificates are used to get lucrative government contracts. Ethiopians in the past had high regard for educated citizens, however, these unearned credentials, poor quality of education and pervasive political hiring are demeaning the value of education and its benefit. This ultimately discourages responsible parents from sending their children to school.
Poor Quality of Education is a National Issue
The issue of poor quality education is systemic and should be considered a national priority because the problem is widespread throughout all levels of the education sector and all over the country. It is about the survival of the nation. Young people who are not educated how to think critically are not ready to engage in constructive and well-founded arguments. People who do not have good education are unlikely to cope with changes. Students are left with no options, and they are prevented from pursuing alternative ideas. The colleges and the schools are not in a position to help the students develop technical skills, critical thinking, and reasoning skills to analyze various issues nor to develop alternative perspectives. The learners are not given the opportunity to develop communication skills that promote positive and beneficial outcomes.
The students are made to follow a one-size-fit-all approach of TPLF. Organized in a one-to-five spying cell, they are brainwashed by the TPLF cadres and indoctrinated with TPLF ethnocentric propaganda. The students are urged to be organized by their ethnicity and religion, which was not a common practice in Ethiopian higher learning institutions. What they know and what they are persuaded to appreciate is the TPLF ethnocentric policy. TPLF created ethnic enclaves and by design puts the unity of Ethiopia at risk. The core of Ethiopian constitution, Article 39, which is promulgated by TPLF states, “Every nation, nationality or people in Ethiopia shall have the unrestricted right to self determination up to secession.” TPLF leaders often preach and threaten the public that Ethiopia will disintegrate and horn of Africa will be a war zone if they step down or if they are removed from power. TPLF lures the young people to accept the tyranny.
The students are also purposely made to deviate from the long-held and time-tested positive Ethiopian tradition of problem solving, honesty, courtesy, civility, patriotism, and dignity. The value system in the schools and college community is being eroded. Cheating in exams and inflating grades have become a new norm. Now it is common to hear about university students engaged in prostitution. This is the shame of the nation that the public openly discusses. The schools and colleges are becoming hotbeds of a dysfunctional generation. Students are becoming dependent on ‘chat’ and other narcotic drugs. The way the government is running the schools and colleges is making the public lose trust in the education system. This is significantly damaging and takes decades to repair.
Underperforming graduates are taking the teaching job; and children do not get appropriate help and guidance. To be recruited and join teacher education colleges, the candidates should be members of EPRDF. Individuals who are competent but neutral or critical of the government are not given the opportunity. Academic performance is not a major criterion to become a teacher. The teacher education colleges are accepting such underprepared candidates that they even have to teach prospective teachers how to write Amharic alphabets. This way, the unqualified but TPLF-loyal individuals are filling the openings in the new schools and supplanting the retirees. The cycle is continuing and affecting all sectors. Driven by ethnic politics, there has been too much focus on mother tongue as a language of instruction. In addition to the lack of qualified primary school teachers, according to a World Bank study, some of the regions are facing challenges in using mother tongues due to lack of learning materials, and because children in a class often have different mother tongues.
University presidents and educational leaders are appointed based on their allegiances to TPLF and based on their place of origin. This does not help to get the best available educational leaders for the job, to improve quality, nor to strengthen the national integrity of the country. This creates narrow local sentiment. Colleges and universities should play important roles in national integration by bringing together students and faculty of different geographical regions. If used wisely, the institutions in Ethiopia can serve as lynchpins for the unity of the country instead of promoting conflict-inciting and irresponsible ethnic politics. To improve the quality of education, the institutions need visionary leaders who can think outside the box, who focus on the needs of the stakeholders and who are truly committed to improving the quality of education. The educational administrators and the presidents are evaluated by their demonstrated loyalty and commitment to TPLF-EPRDF, not by their loyalty to the institution they lead and the students they serve.
It is not the input materials, building, class size, textbooks, library, laboratory, or technology alone that assures or enhances quality. Of course, resources are essential, but if we do not address the root causes of the problem, we continue wasting the scarce resources and pushing the country deeper into poverty. Are Ethiopian taxpayers now getting the most for their money spent on the schools and universities? Ethiopians should first focus on the best use of the available resources before they scale up colleges and high schools and open new ones using loan and aid money.
Recommendations
The root cause of the poor quality of education in Ethiopia is the misguided, politicized, and authoritarian administration of the education system by EPRDF, along with the government’s lack of political will to truly address this root cause of the problem. This resulted in prison-like educational institutions that muzzle and stunt students and teachers. On the part of the government, there is no genuine demand for high quality education. The regime is unwilling to attract and keep well-qualified human resources that can achieve quality; it is rather deliberately driving the quality of education down by staffing the educational institutions with incompetent and TPLF-loyal individuals. It sets low and politically motivated expectations for the schools and colleges to achieve. The educational institutions are accomplishing what TPLF wants.
Primarily, there should be the political will and commitment to address the problem. EPRDF is treating the symptoms instead of focusing on the root cause. The Ethiopian government is trying to justify the end by using seemingly appropriate means, such as building more universities, increasing enrollment, etc. Without the political resolve and commitment to quality, all expansion, evaluation of education programs, assessments, or quality audits will be futile exercises. If the evaluation is to see whether the schools and colleges are achieving the misguided partisan goals, it does not help to improve quality because it will be just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The first step to continuously improve quality of education is identifying and addressing the needs of the ultimate stakeholders. There should be academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Committed, hardworking, ethical, autonomous, and competent teachers, faculty, and administrators are indispensable to achieve quality in education. Equally important are the commitment, motivation, discipline, and hard work of the learners who are the co-creators of knowledge. Parents should also play a role in setting higher standards for their children and creating conducive environment for learning. There should be a quality enhancement system properly integrated with the teaching-learning process. Without these, Ethiopia cannot provide quality education and build a resilient, sustainable, and knowledge-based economy. Otherwise, Ethiopians will be relegated to be dogsbodies for foreigners and continue to live in abject poverty even if the country could be able to attract foreign investors and focus on manufacturing and mechanized farms.
Development is a function of innovative and creative minds, hard work, and responsible leadership. Only loyalty to TPLF-EPRDF and the work of few partyand army-owned companies cannot make Ethiopia competitive in the 21st globalized economy. It is engaging citizens and the collective impact that make significant differences in the lives of Ethiopians. If Ethiopia needs to achieve socio-economic development, the government should entertain diverse viewpoints. Ethiopians should be able to freely express their views, develop, and realize their potentials. The government should create not only the supply but also the demand for high quality and relevant education. It has to build a culture of rewarding hard work, integrity, innovation, and creativity – not just faithfulness to TPLF. Such culture will drive schools, colleges, students, parents, teachers, and administrators to focus on real quality education.
The government should have the stomach and political will to stop using the public sectors to recruit and retain party loyalist, and to choke off dissent. To make meaningful changes, the government must start involving all stakeholders; it should rethink how to organize and administer the education system. The government should have trust in Ethiopians, and Ethiopians should have a government they confide in and hold accountable. Few highly paid foreign consultants and international organizations, like the World Bank or USAID, cannot create panacea for Ethiopian education problems.
International organizations like the World Bank, USAID, and British Department of International Development and foreign countries that finance this destructive education system should evaluate the damage they are causing and they should reexamine their policies before they continue channeling more money to exacerbate the suffering of Ethiopians. The systemic suppression of Ethiopians by EPRDF is already costing Ethiopian taxpayers billions of dollars.
Teachers, faculty, educational administrators, students, parents, civic organizations, local researchers, citizens, and funding agencies should be at the forefront to demand fundamental changes and solutions to this deliberately created problem; and they should be part of the solution. This is not just about education, or few schools or colleges; it is about Ethiopia and Ethiopians. The issue of quality Education in Ethiopia is an elephant in the room. Where there is a will, there is a way.
[*]The writers can be reached at ewnetuyineger15@gmail.com
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