Perceptions of Public Educators about the Education and Training Provided by Private Colleges in Tigray

Abstract

It is observable that Higher Education in Ethiopia faces many problems both in terms of quantity and quality of provision. Collaborative and concerted efforts by different partners in education that include private enterprises organized as for-profit businesses are still necessary. However, many public educators in Tigray seem to view the private colleges with distrust, likely for the mere reason that one of the colleges’ aims is making profit. This paper, therefore, investigates the participation of Private Higher Education Institutions in the management and resources support to current adult education in Tigray and how private colleges are usually viewed by the public education sector. Hence, the objective of this paper is to explore whether there exists major differences in perceiving positively or negatively the educational opportunities being provided by private colleges in Tigray. The researcher employs descriptive research method mainly focusing on both quantitative and qualitative primary data. Data on the perception of people concerning the private colleges was gathered by the following data collection techniques: observation, interviews/questionnaires and document analysis. Informants were randomly selected from public and private institutions. Available secondary data sources from current documents were collected and integrated with the data obtained from primary sources. Percentages were computed to analyze the data. The findings of the study suggest that the participation and contributions of private colleges’ to higher adult education are significant, which indicates that more household contribution to education can be gained which is essential for learning and further development. However, the study evidenced that the public educators mistrust private colleges for low quality of educational service provision, while the causes of the problems of quality of education and training cannot be problems of the private sector alone. There appears to exist lack of commitment to participate from the education administrators’ side to facilitate essential conditions for true participation in education. They need to share their authority and responsibility to various actors in education, outside of the system, if rapid development is to be achieved.