Correction does much, but encouragement does more, goes a saying by the German author Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. The last few years of education policy making include perplexing hits and lamentable misses.

Some policies are bound to be tumultuous, especially the ones concerning age limits for graduate school enrollment and the increased fee from 100 Br to 500 Br per credit hour for graduate school education that adds up to 25,000 to 30,000 Br per degree.

The policy that is pending, which could be implemented in the next academic year, can be described as the meat cleaver for the enthusiastic learner. This is ironic, especially for a country that needs a considerable amount of skilled manpower to reach the major objectives that are set.

The growth in enrollment for tertiary education has been rapid. The number of students that were studying at a handful of universities and colleges speckled across the nation a couple of decades back has increased in tenfold. This should not come as a surprise for a government whose resolve is to eliminate poverty. Developing human capital is naturally a part of this policy.

The rhetoric on education reform continues with an unstinting emphasis on setting up new universities and improving teacher quality.

However, it is unacceptable to move forward with the inertia and myopia that have made achieving real and required reforms so difficult. Academic standards are not raised with a focus mainly on quantity.

While implementing business process re-engineering (BPR) studies a few months ago, Addis Abeba University (AAU) mainly focused on institutional structure, neglecting the question of quality to a large extent.

Experts who were involved in the study did not seem alarmed by the age limit restrictions.

The educational system has a long way to go to attain the aspired and anticipated goals, so there must be sturdy moves on reforms.

The government should go back to the drawing board to ensure a more tolerable policy, especially concerning the maximum age limit of applicants that are self-sponsored – 35 for master’s degrees and 45 for doctoral degrees. 

This government is not limited by resources in its drive to expand the education sector. Indeed, lock, stock and barrel, it has spent hundreds of millions of Birr in its reform programme for this growth.

Interestingly, public spending on education, following the outlay for roads construction is now the second area of focus by the government. An equitable distribution of resources has been undertaken to increase the quantity of these institutions. But for the maintenance of, or upgrade in, the quality of the educational system, a lot has been said but little is being done, such as focusing on the increasing number of students that will be filtered out.

But what is overwhelmingly depressing is that quality is unavoidable collateral damage when engaging in mass education. A good deal of time has been dedicated to talking about how to introduce quality control in the sector.

It is time those words were put into action so that, alongside all the infrastructural development, there will be development of the manpower and educational resources needed to ensure quality education.

Education policy makers should step in to help overcome this obstacle and avoid possible mistakes. Proposing policies in the absence of proper planning, adequate supporting facilities and manpower is an empty gesture to attempt to impress the intellectual elites. It is inevitable that such policies render the least merit to the organ formulating it.

There are fundamentally two problems to this. Disregarding the high demand of graduate school education leads to decreasing the potential output. Secondly, students enrolled will face less competition in class and will emerge as a small fish in a vast international ocean.

It would make a lot more sense for the government to focus on refining things that are demanded, mainly, luring in more self-sponsored students to graduate schools that are already in place. There is so much that needs to be properly fixed before it fulfills its desire to see the furthering of expansion in this sector.

Policy makers should dedicate their energy to the advocacy and enforcement of quality education by focusing on having more students and introducing a set of reforms more palatable than having age restrictions.

The state can perform better for the education sector if its agents in the executive branch set feasible standards and ensure educational institutions observe them. This is a job within the legitimate role of the state.

The age restriction contradicts the interests of the general public by handicapping the demand through noncompetitive means. There are already plenty of reasons that force people be left behind from joining tertiary level education.

The third education sector development of the government had stressed the need for having more post-graduates from educational institutions for the development of trained manpower. That programme document apparently talked the talk but certainly did not walk the walk. In the absence of appropriate policy formulations, the evaluation of the nation’s lack of skilled manpower will be like establishing Disneyland without having Mickey Mouse.

Emperor Haileselassie has long been applauded for initiating the idea of having higher education in the country. He even went further by bequeathing his palace to the expansion of the campus. There was a milestone, now the current policy makers will either go down in the history books applauded or disparaged by the public.

Though it takes two to tango, maintaining the balance of power between policy makers and stakeholders makes it a delicate dance. The Ministry of Education is pushing AAU to enroll more students, principally the government-sponsored ones from regional universities. It also focuses on the efficiency of the trained personnel and the training instead of the priority for their own survival or life prospect, not to mention the never-ending desire of AAU to be autonomous and have its own mandate.

Apparently, Andreas Esheté, AAU president has tried to demonstrate, for some time now, that he understands that any real educational reform, can be attained, by primarily consenting to the autonomous nature of the university.

The need for true, meaningful educational reform has never been more urgent. Instead of putting bans and restrictions on trivial items which highly endangers public interest and the demand for education, there must be a well organised and thoroughly thought out plan before implementing and strictly monitoring reforms including the standard of training, enrollment and most of all quality.