Once upon a time there was a king who wanted to build a tower whose top gets as far as the heavens. If one ignores all the negative intentions of the king and focus on his target of reaching the heavens, it showed his believe in God and a desire to bring his people close to the heavens. At the same time there existed priests, who also have the same intention but were suggesting the king was doing it in a wrong way. Finally as the big book states, the almighty mixed up their language and the whole project failed.

From the introduction and the title, it is easy to concur the metaphors implied in this article. The current Ethiopian government set an ambitious plan of creating an industry driven economy in East Africa. The government set up a number of strategies to achieve that and the most famous one is called 70:30, an educational system where 70% of students go to science studies and the rest go to social science studies in higher education institutes. Bear in mind that the 70% number include students studying applied sciences (such as chemistry, biology), natural sciences (including agriculture), information communication technology (ICT) and engineering technology. Generating a skilled labour is essential to build an industrialized economy and driving majority of students to natural science fields creates the necessary work force. But the current policy of the government that focus on quantity than quality puts the idea of “skilled” in question. Especially in technological studies where innovation, creativity and practical knowledge are the core for effectiveness of an employee, lack of a quality education makes the output of the system a zero or probably a negative sum. Engineering technology study in Ethiopia has a long history that started in 1960s, almost at the same time as Tunisia which is credited as one of the few African countries with a substantial manufacturing economy [2]. While the engineering sector of Tunisia has grown to put the country in the map of manufacturing center in Africa, that of Ethiopia's continue its ineffective path without a responsible diagnosis of the problem.

First came a new educational curriculum under the current government which evaluates students in high school and separate those that join higher education institutes and technical and vocational studies. This implementation adopted mostly from european educational system seems pleasant, though the quality has been decreasing from its inception time as the focus at both the higher educational or technical schools was merely quantity. These quantitative numbers might be useful in government reports and propaganda but their practical output seemed to be elusive till this day.

Then followed the introduction of Engineering Capacity Building Program (ecbp) in 2005 together with the German government and another hope was placed on identifying and correcting mistakes in the system. Unfortunately, the focus on quantity prevailed again and floods of students are joining the new “Institute of Technologies (IoT)”.

The completed Ethiopian year, the Addis Ababa IoT, admitted 3500 new students without any additional facilities [1]. If we assume an equal distribution of students among the 5 departments in the institute, there will be 700 students per department which can not be supported by the current resources present. To look it from the perspective take a typical 3 hour computer laboratory session thats is part of a course for these students. Doing the maximum possible two shifts per day that total 10 sessions per week are possible needing a laboratory that supports 70 students at one time. Taking a reasonable 35 computers per a laboratory, a typical department should have at least 2 computer laboratories for new students and at least an additional 3 laboratories for the rest of the senior classes. Such a facility is never found in any of the universities I have been in and no plans are made to work on adding these burningly needed resources. Another important quality issue concerns, overloaded work hour for the insufficient instructors which makes the already lackluster atmosphere more gloomy. Assuming an average contact hour of 32 hours per week for courses, at least 20 overworked instructors, each working 16 contact hours per week, are needed to cover a course for 700 students in a classroom full of 70 student which by itself is another problem in the typical small class rooms common in the universities. Adding further instructors for senior classes ,which by themselves have huge numbers, brings the need to about 40 stuff per department which can not be found in any of the “IoTs”. One can automatically ignore research and other responsibilities expected from instructors here. It is of course clear that given the competition based grading used in Ethiopia, smart students excel though their full potential is hidden in this low quality education.

There seems to be a complain about this quantity issue by people who are supposed to manage the enforcement of the policy [1], but rather than speaking out and trying to push for amends they are seen to keep the status quo. The ecbp which was supposed to fix these problems kept diverting from the main goal of productivity and there seemed to be no positive option in sight. I know no relevant office will respond to the points raised in the article but I will keep on advocating this issue until I see changes or be part of a discussion for solution where I can openly express my voices here without fear.

References :

[1] Addis Fortune : http://www.addisfortune.com/Vol_10_No_585_Archive/agenda.htm
[2] Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Africa