Cross-Border Partnership and Collaboration in Maintaining Quality Education in Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIS) In Africa: Some Selected Cases from Ethiopia

Abstract

Higher education institutions in Africa are responsible for the provision of skilled human resources that match with the current demand of the market as well as the pressing development needs of Africa. In this regard, private higher education institutions in Ethiopia also stakes. As opposed to the public ones, PHEIS are striving to provide quality education despite the imperative resource challenges both in terms of infrastructure and human. Different programs have been designed by PHEIs in collaboration with international and national organizations to address these challenges. Especially, in the light of bringing international expertise, different crossborder collaborations and partnership with a view of addressing the human resources challenges and others have been ventured. In line with this, there are also quality assurance institutions encouraging the ventures. Nevertheless, despite the availability of cross boarder collaboration and partnerships in Ethiopia, little is known about the level and status of crossborder collaboration and partnerships in PHEIs vis-à-vis provision of quality education. Therefore, this research was initiated to fill this gap by way of identifying the challenges and opportunities in venturing in such kind of cross-border collaborations and partnerships in Ethiopia. Specifically the research will try to address such questions as “what modalities are employed in order to venture such kind of cross-border collaboration and partnerships?” “what challenges PHEIs were/are faced with while venturing?”, “what regulatory frameworks are there from the GoE side/ HERQA?”; “what roles does Consortium of PHEIs play in this regard?”, “what are the opportunities in maintaining quality in PHEIs” and “what lessons can be learnt from the success stories and available endeavors on the issues?”. The institutions targeted for the research are Admas University College, Alpha University College, St. Mary’s University College and UnityUniversity, Consortium of PHEIs from the PHEIs and Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA) from the quality ensuring institutions side. In order to give appropriate answers to the research questions, qualitative survey method was employed and pertinent literatures, and documents were also reviewed. Major findings of the research are crossborder collaboration has immense opportunities in insuring quality in the service delivery of PHEIs. Some of these opportunities are pulling expertise which cannot be secured otherwise, sharing training materials, curricula and so on. The research also found that PHEIs will be challenged to establish a working culture comparable with partnering institutions, and they are also expected to build infrastructure and human resources to make the partnering on equal footing. Major recommendations of the research include that cross-border collaboration should be considered as the fourth pillar for PHEIs; the consortium of PHEIs in Ethiopia should strive to enable PHEIs to capture the opportunity out of cross-border collaboration and government should assist PHEIs in venturing cross-border collaboration as it is keen to assist the public ones.