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It is not an everyday matter to meet a prime
minister and air views. The youth and women have
done it. Senior citizens are waiting for the
opportunity to avail itself to them.
Last week it was the university academics that were
in the limelight with the PM to discuss common
issues that have a bearing on the quality of
education in particular and the socioeconomic
development of the country in general. Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi is making it almost a point in
his leadership to develop a culture of holding
discussions with the staff of the highest institute
of learning and discuss issues of national
importance.
Such a session to discuss the challenges of higher
learning was held for the second time in about six
years. The moderator of the important discussion was
the humble looking Professor Andréas Eshete,
President of Addis Abeba University (AAU). Except
for brief introductory remarks by the moderator, the
session was predominantly characterised by questions
and answers.
The number of state and private higher learning
institutions is growing by leaps and bounds in a
relatively short span of time. Consequently the
challenges of higher learning, particularly with
regards to the quality of education are getting more
complex and demanding with the passage of time. It
is interesting to note that a lot of academics in
the regional states were also participating in the
discussions via electronic media. Some of the
questions were very pertinent and universal in
nature.
One can roughly classify the issues raised during
the discussion into three broad categories; namely,
quality and standard of education, issues pertaining
to the private learning institutions and fringe
benefits or personal problems of the staff having
some direct or indirect bearing on the quality of
education in the country. Unlike the first session
held six years ago, the participants of last week's
discussion did not seem to engage themselves much in
polemics, perhaps not wanting to cross the "red
line" drawn to barricade those naïve participants
from falling into troubled waters, as it were.
We parents are worried about the quality of
education because the future of this country very
much depends on the intellect of the succeeding
generation. The biggest challenge facing the
institutions of higher learning these days is
plagiarism, which is aggravated by the Internet.
Recently, I had an opportunity to have a look at a
draft of a dissertation paper from an undergraduate
student. It did not take me long to discern that the
material was too good to believe to have been
written by an Ethiopian undergraduate student. I
knew the student was mundane in the English language
to say the least. He had simply downloaded the
material and had tried to superimpose his own
editing work, which was very poor. It seems to me
that both students and staff know too well that
plagiarism reins as long as there is the service of
Google or Yahoo search.
This tendency of copying or engaging oneself in what
they call "social work" is believed to be inculcated
in the minds of students since their primary or
secondary education days. Would such products be
able to shoulder the demanding responsibility of
leadership, I wonder. I guess the problem is
universal. Copying things may be inevitable as it is
one of the shortest routes of development. It has
also intrinsic destructive values if applied wrongly
as in the case of education.
Forfeiting some tax money on the part of the
government is a small price to pay for creating
conducive situations to produce a reading
generation, which would go a long way to solving
this problem. Books and publications that augment
learning are scarce in this country probably with no
equals anywhere in the world.
The other day a lady publisher wanting to start a
new Amharic weekly told me that it would cost her
four Birr apiece if it is colour. One Newsweek or
Time magazine costs around 24 Br on the market. One
has to drive to the British Council to read The
Economist.
It is saddening to note that we have more youngsters
that are better versed with the European football
coaches and star players than that know the
Ethiopian Constitution for instance.
The discussion on the issues raised by the private
colleges and universities dwelt around
administrative and bureaucratic problems interfacing
with the Ministry of Education (MoE). There were
points related to prohibited programmes like
training educators or limitations to Diploma
programmes only.
The third aspect of the discussion dealt with the
personal problems of lecturers, a subject, according
to many cynics, that revealed that the ruling party
was in full control of social and economic
governance over the academics, a revelation that
topics like Bonapartism or polemics on
Non-partisanship or liberalism and so forth
aggressively discussed during the first session size
years ago were reduced down to size into appeals for
"land for the tiller", sorry, "land for the
lecturer", duty-free importation of personal effects
like automobiles or the housing problem.
A
friend of mine told me that he never thought that
the aspiration to develop the country by reducing
poverty and joining the middle income group of
nations would materialise so soon. He said that
lecturers being among the middle income group by
Ethiopian standards, reaping the fruits of growth or
poverty reduction could be realised before too long
by the looks of things. This could be a good omen
for the rest of us low income groups.
University lecturers might as well establish
building societies, save minimum amounts and ask for
plots of land for building residential houses.
Perhaps import of building materials could be
granted duty-free. A young lecturer without a house
to live in and read his lessons or correct papers is
certainly in a pretty bad shape to care about the
quality of education.
If the participants could engage the prime minister
in long discussions, they might as well have told
him that the alarming inflation rate has cancelled
out the much-praised salary increments. In fact,
many of us are worse off. Investors worry about the
price hike in cement, steel or other building
materials. The middle income group may worry about
the cost of building a house or the price of the
latest model car, lean meat from Harar or Scotch
whisky from Europe. The low income group is worried
about the price of tef, pepper, sugar,
cereals or edible oil. We live in a deferent world.
We senior citizens shall appeal to the Prime
Minister to reduce our poverty when we meet him.
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