The Role of Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs) in Human Capital Development in Ethiopia: an impetus to achieve the Ethiopian Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP)

Abstract

Ethiopia is still categorized as one of the poorest countries in the world. Forty-six percent of its population lives on income less than one USD per day. Only 33% of the population is literate. Recently, the government has adopted the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) in order to sustain rapid and broad-based growth path witnessed during the past several years and eventually end poverty. In the fight against poverty, education especially tertiary level education plays a key role. Cognizant of this fact, Ethiopia has embarked on the expansion of tertiary level education, including private higher education institutions (PHEIs) since the introduction of the Ethiopian Education and Training Policy in 1994. Education contributes to human capital formation (the quality of labor) which, in turn, affects productivity. The major objective of this study was to investigate the role of PHEIs in developing the human capital and, hence, contribute to the realization of GTP. This study mainly adopted both qualitative and quantitative methodology and used relevant secondary data sources for analysis. The data analysis indicated that even though the expansion of PHEIs is recent phenomenon, their contribution towards the formation of human capital is quite commendable. In 2008/09, there were 319,217 students enrolled in government higher education institutions and PHEIs. Of these students 55,264 (17%) were in PHEIs. Furthermore, in 2008/09, girls’ enrollment accounted for 27% of the student population in government higher education institutions, where as in PHEIs girls’ enrollment accounted for 35.4% of the student population. Thus, PHEIs are more open to girls’ education as compared with the government higher education institutions. This, in turn, indicates that PHEIs perform better in regard to the issues of gender equity than government higher educational institutions. The study results also showed that in 2008/09 a total of 59,027 students graduated from both the government higher education institutions and PHEIs. From these graduates, 12,349 (21%) were from PHEIs. Furthermore, in 2008/09, a total of 16,940 girls graduated from both government higher education institutions and PHEIs. From these total, female graduates from PHEIS were 6,916 (41%). What has been observed from the study was that PHEIs 2 do contribute a lot to the formation of human capital that the country needs for GTP. In the absence of PHEIs, only government higher education institutions could have been in a very difficult situation to meet the demand of GTP in terms of skilled human resources. Thus, PHEIs do have an important place in the Ethiopian educational system. They proved this in a short period of time.