文档介绍：EMERGING MODELS OF QUALITY, RELEVANCE AND STANDARDS IN ETHIOPIA’S HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
Professor Kate Ashcroft Professor Kate Ashcroft is in Ethiopia for two years as a VSO Volunteer within the Ethiopian Higher Education Strategy Institute working as a Higher Education Advisor. She is also Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, where she was the Deputy Vice Chancellor ing to Ethiopia.
Abstract: In 2003 the Ethiopian Government introduced a higher education proclamation (Federal Republic of Ethiopia: 2003), establishing wide ranging reforms to the higher education system and setting up key agencies to guide and oversee the sector, including the Ethiopian Higher Education Strategy Institute and the Quality and Relevance Assurance Agency.
The reforms introduce elements of a quasi-market in higher education: students sharing the costs of higher education and therefore moving into a customer-like relationship with higher education institutions; the expansion of private higher education; the move away from state funding of public higher education institutions through the encouragement of e generation activity. They also enabled a move from extreme centralization towards institutional autonomy. Such autonomy and the creation of a quasi- market depends upon ‘customers’(and other stakeholders such as the Government) being assured of the quality of the ‘product’ offered (whether education, consultancy or applied research). Without that assurance, the reforms would not meet the country’s development agenda.
This paper reports on the extent that appropriate quality assurance practices are presently in existence in Ethiopia and proposes an emerging model of quality and standards.
The Study
During the early part of 2004, the author (with others) visited all six of the public universities and two of the institutions that are destined to e universities over the next two years. This study reports on the visits to the eight pu