The Prime Minister did not pull any punches when he spoke at Addis Abeba University's (AAU) Strategic Planning Conference last week. Mentioning that he was dissatisfied with the standard of graduates from the country's premiere institution, he hoped that the school would become "a pre-eminent research institute."

Although he acknowledged the little his government has done to improve the situation, he nonetheless sounded more conciliatory and sensitive to his audience - largely members of the university community - than he should have been. This voicing of his unhappiness with the calibre of the University is the least he could have said. That the nation's oldest and premier university is failing the nation in general and the job world in particular is not even subject to discussion. Talk to businessmen in town, and they too will yearn for better standards at the University. Year in, year out, there seems to be a dizzying gap between what employers are needing and what the University offers in the form of its yearly output of graduates.

Any university is primarily judged by the quality of its product, how good its graduates fulfil the demand of their employers whether in the public or private sectors or even the newly emerging civil society world. Should this be taken as a critical yardstick, Addis Abeba University has been having an extremely disappointing product with its graduates largely viewed by the job world as lacking the basic knowledge and ability to communicate the very subject they are thought have been taught.

Employers who speak, do so with a shocking level of certainty that new graduates with nary a sense of duty and work ethics are in far more supply than what one would have thought. Although many embrace new graduates hoping that they could learn more from industry training and learning-on-the-fly, this has been proven an uphill task as many of these graduates lack a basic will to be trained. That is the state of affairs of the products from the Addis Abeba University and many of the other mushrooming colleges (that make the first appear like the "Harvard of Ethiopia").  

Why this gap?

It is not an easy question to answer as the reasons are both historical, institutional, and perhaps even cultural.

When Emperor Haile Sellasie created the University College of Addis Abeba, over 50 years ago, he had hoped that it would give his empire a semblance that is moving to modernity. At the beginning, the students were too small in number to have any impact in the massively under developed and agrarian society. What the Emperor ended up creating, as far as history is concerned, is a politically skilled, educated and mainly rhetorical elite opposition that would eventually topple him with its fervour for leftist ideology; the country is still besieged by this legacy.

The military regime largely rode on the coat tails of this wave of the university-based leftist discontent (even sending armies of students out to the countryside to spread its egalitarian message), only to brutally and tragically subjugate it later.

And even in the time of the current regime, the University has been scene to tumultuous political pyrotechnics (take for instance the summary dismissal of 43 staff members in one day in the early 1990s). If anything, the University is often understood as a proxy, the cauldron of Ethiopia's politics, as opposed to the educational institution that reliably graduates employable twenty-somethings and becomes a fountain of knowledge for a nation that is still struggling to find a national consensus that is more inclusive and consultative.

While this history may be an important detail in the story of the country, want-ads from employers continue to be left unanswered and frustrated in the pages of the country's various newspapers; this fact is nothing short of ludicrous. In a poor country like Ethiopia where unemployment is rampant (some suggest urban unemployment is over 40pc) unfilled positions should be a once-in-a blue moon aberration. But this is not the case. The University, try as it may, cannot seem to provide a relevant education to fill vacant positions.

The institutional reasons for this probably stem from the politics. At the University, there has been a seeming inability to develop a concerted plan for itself. Departments are run as directionless fiefdoms by administration and faculty that churn out graduates who take little from the experience but the nominal sense that they attended a university. There exists an alarming intellectual indifference among its lead academicians.

Where is the proactive outreach to the business and institutional sectors so that they can give a clear picture of what they need to fill their ranks, without having to turn to manpower from abroad?

Perhaps this sorry state of affairs, these directionless departments, comes from the fact that academics are a somewhat frightened breed. Since AAU has been the historical focus of political turmoil and a cogent metaphor for the country's bitter political divide, sticking your neck out with even an academic vision for the future has seemed a foolhardy business.

Thankfully however, with the arrival of the strategic plan for the next five years, a vision is finally what is being provided, and for the first time since the 1970s at that.

It is true enough that as of right now, the program itself is wanting of specifics. The various brochures and statements are long on generalities and short on game plans. But by inviting the Prime Minister to make a speech and by so publicly putting his face in the forefront of the plans creation and execution, University President Andreas Eshete (PhD) should be commended for at least trying to break with the past. Although last week's event has been graced with the rare appearance of the Prime Minister in front of an audience that largely resent him, Professor Andreas has been courageous and wise enough to have hosted a series of discussions with leaders of the various sectors in the economy and his lieutenants. His effort to leave a positive legacy of meaning and relevance to the needs the Ethiopian society is much to be admired.

Professor Andreas' ambition and willingness to leap before cameras is a behaviour that is hardly typical for the University. At least, Ethiopians-at-large can finally put a clear face with the ambition and promises he pledges for tomorrow.

During the planning events, there was a widely acknowledged acceptance that the University does not have the financial means to do anything absolutely transformational in the next five years. Indeed, like a plucky David taking on Golitah, the University seems committed to trying to set up partnerships internationally and seize whatever advantage it can when such an advantage emerges.

And in order for philosophy deeply ingrained in the University's many dilapidated departments to become more open and fruitful in terms of education provided, Andreas's energy will have to become quickly contagious.

How can faculty and administration members be counted on as agents of change?

The answer, as in so many institutions these days, is accountability. Mechanisms and dialogues need to be set-up so that there is a direct line between the calibre of the graduate and the team that provided him or her that education, something that sorely lacks today. Professors need to be more effective and if this is not possible then the professor in question should be replaced.

And this does not mean that the state needs to dive in and make its desires felt and enacted at a micro-level, but too often academics cry government meddling. While it is absolutely necessary to maintain an independent institution of higher learning, crying wolf whenever the state wants to know how its money is being spent is not doing the institution, or its graduates, any favours. Accountability does not become subjugation until it concretely becomes so. And when students coming out of a University, diploma in hand, are so patently unprepared to fill the jobs that need fulfilling, government bullying clearly is hardly the burning issue, basic educational competency is.

It will be interesting to see if all the events of last week up at Sidist Kilo will amount to anything in the next five years. At least, they indicate that the University is indeed at a defining moment to change course in order to play its legitimate role of human development in society. Even the slightest improvement will not go unappreciated by the scores of people with hiring capacity who, to their own bewilderment, see their numerous job vacancies perennially unfilled.

When looking back after five years, Andreas should be judged more by whether he laid the foundation for the University that can produce an individual with the capacity to have "original, creative and rational thinking, as well as the ability to choose intelligently between alternatives". After all, that is what the traditional purpose for the existence of a higher education learning institution. We would like to believe that is also what the AAU was created for in the first place.