Enhancing Public-Private Partnerships for Development of Competitive Higher Education in Ethiopia: Some Reflections on Private Higher Education

Abstract

Judged by the number of higher education providers in the private sector and by the size of their enrolments, one could note that private higher education is one of the fastest growing sectors in the country. Such a growth of private higher education provision is a logical outcome of a traditional education system that has a serious structural deficiency, which has created a backlog of hundreds of thousands of potentially able and willing learners; i.e., the demand for higher education was far exceeding its supply. This growth has also brought about a new and important development in terms of changing people's attitude towards higher education - i.e., it has demonstrated that people should and could take responsibility for their own (and their children) education. Although private higher education institutions are ‘private’, their product is for ‘public consumption’. Private higher education institutions are thus playing a big role of social responsibility. This paper attempts to present a general framework for productive public-private partnerships for the development of competitive higher education in Ethiopia. It first outlines the major points of departure that guides the arguments in the rest of the paper. These points revolve around the role and position of higher education in determining the country's competitiveness in the global marketplace, the problems with the traditional approach of organizing and providing education, the concept of education as a business, the balance between quality enhancement and expansion of enrolment, and issues of sustainability. Then some of the salient outstanding issues are identified including expansion, access, quality and relevance. This is followed by charting out a general framework that defines productive public-private partnership and collaborative engagement. The divergent perspectives surrounding private higher education which guide and dictate the behavior, actions and outcomes of any partnerships are discussed. The argument is that the dominant perspectives tend towards either a highly restrictive or facilitative environment determining the performance of the partnership and its outcomes. Shared vision on higher education, clarified mission and roles of actors as well as mutual trust are identified as building blocks. Within the purview of such convergent vision and clarified missions, the role of each counterpart is outlined: government ought to work in such a way as to induce demand, influence supply and facilitate quality assurance, thus enhancing the competitiveness of the institutions and the country at large in the global marketplace. Private HEIs ought to demonstrate that they have a stake in quality through, for example, formulating a robust and rigorous quality assurance mechanism and implementing it through innovative approaches and organized response. Useful lessons could be drawn from both success and failure experiences elsewhere. The paper concludes by reiterating the importance of considering higher education as a social good even when it has to be provided through private means, the significance of viewing quality assurance and expansion of market share as mutually reinforcing objectives in the medium-long term, the relevance of promoting the development of quality higher education provision for the country's competitiveness, the instrumentality of productive public-private partnership based on convergent vision, and the criticality of the attitude, behavior, and actions of the private higher education sub-sector in determining the outcomes. The role of external factors is to facilitate or retard the pace.