| Abstract: | The widespread emergence and development of Private Higher Education Institutions
(PHEIs) in Ethiopia is a recent phenomenon. Among other things, this is the result of the
fact that government higher education institutions alone could not absorb the high
educational demand from the society. Many countries of the world, both developed and
developing, have never been successful in responding to the educational demand of the
public through conventional institutions alone-institutions established on the basis of the
customary classroom teacher-student interactions mode. Their educational history
shows that they are extensively using other alternatives chief among which is the
introduction of distance mode of education into their educational system.
Distance Education in Ethiopia, is gaining momentum with the appearance of PHEIs in
the country. This paper tries to show Distance Education (DE) as an alternative mode of
teaching and learning in creating access, flexibility and cost effectiveness, and suggests
possible ways of exploiting it for the purpose of academic delivery. The paper focuses,
mainly, on distance education provision at St. Mary’s College.
A method of descriptive statistics (tabulation and percentage values) was applied to
analyze the data collected from the application forms of 206 distance learners (half of the
Megabit 1994 E.C. intake) of St. Mary's College. The findings of the study show that DE
is really accessible, flexible, and cost-effective to diverse types of learners in Ethiopia, at
least in reference to the provision of the mode at St. Mary's College, more than the
conventional mode of education. |
