| 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. |
