Who to blame for the deteriorating quality of education in Ethiopia
Many of us agree that the quality of our education is in a downward spiral. We witness the deteriorating quality of education everywhere: buildings that waste lots of space due to design problems; clinics with nurses that struggle to provide injections to their patients; even schools with teachers that fail to pass exams meant for their students, etc. People often blame the education policy for this. I tend to disagree, at least to some extent.
The ever-increasing dysfunctional labor markets take most of the blame, in my view. Government is one of the biggest employers in Ethiopia. During the last decade or so, while hiring, government agencies have increasingly put primacy on party membership and loyalty over merit, even for professional and technical jobs. To this effect, some student party members in government universities have taken the duty of grading their fellow students about their commitment and loyalty to the ruling party, which will subsequently impact their employability. This might have adversely impacted the demand for quality education. Given that the government is the major employer, putting in place a rigorous employment process in government agencies can thus provide the right incentive to reactivate the demand for quality education. Of course, this also improves the productivity of the hiring government bodies.
The private sector is also emerging as an important source of employment. The sector is dominated by family-owned businesses. But again, family-owned businesses also tend to value loyalty over merit. For example, these kinds of businesses may prefer a relative or a friend accountant to a competent accountant since the former may be more willing to be an accomplice in the production of fraudulent documents that would help the businesses to evade tax than the latter. One way to address this problem is via incentivizing the formation of corporations. The governance of corporations—the separation of ownership and management—could enable the labor market to reward the quality of education, thereby raising its demand.
People respond to incentives. For example, look at the demand for quality of primary and secondary education in Ethiopia. Putting the status issue aside, many parents send their children to private schools instead of public schools seeking a quality education by paying extra money. I have even met parents who do roadside petty businesses and still surprisingly send their children to private schools. Why? I presume this is in part because our university entrance exam is less corrupted than the exams in the labor markets. And parents know that the reliable pathway for their children to join the university is not through party membership or having the right social networks, but rather through investing in the quality of their education.
On the other hand, unlike primary and secondary education, the quality of education at private colleges is often worse than in public colleges. Historically, private colleges in Ethiopia were primarily established to absorb students whose entrance exam scores are lower than the requirement by public universities. It is thus understandable if private colleges produce less qualified graduates compared to public ones. But lately, because of various reasons (political instability, proximity to family, etc.), students who could join public colleges are also enrolling at private colleges at an increasing rate. This may offer private colleges to improve the quality of their education. But anecdotal evidence suggests that they are not responding to this development. This is mainly because the labor market has not forced them to do so.
Addressing the demand side is necessary but not a sufficient condition for producing capable graduates. The supply side of education deserves attention, too. For instance, teachers in primary and secondary education in public schools receive little compensation for their services. The poor compensation may determine who goes on to become teachers. Also, it may determine whether they remain motivated in their jobs.
Thus, getting the incentive for teachers right is key towards addressing the supply of quality education. The government may struggle to increase teachers’ salaries significantly given its limited fiscal space. Then, what to do? In some other African countries, parents who send their children to public schools step in and contribute to school funding, which is then used to pay top-ups for teachers. Ethiopia could, too, adopt this strategy. In doing so, parents may offer quality education to their children in a less expensive way by sending them to public schools instead of private schools.
To conclude, efforts at improving the quality of Ethiopian education should not be confined to schools and colleges but should also include labor markets. As long as the labor markets fail to reward the quality of education, establishing an educational university or providing tests after tests to students before they leave university will go as another futile attempt to rescue the Ethiopian education from a downward spiral.
