| Abstract: | Ethiopia has embarked on expanding education throughout the country since the
promulgation of the Education and Training Policy (ETP) in 1994.This is more so
in regard to higher education. Higher education plays a pivotal role in human
resource development. Public and private higher education institutions have
expanded after 1994 enrolling thousands of students. However, a cursory
observation shows that all college-age students do not have equal opportunity to join
tertiary level education. Currently, the issues of access and equity are being given
special attention in higher education institutions including PHEIs. Thus, the major
purpose of this paper was to examine the issues of access and equity as addressed
through PHEIs. Equity in education is a measure of fairness, achievement and
opportunity in education. It is widely believed that educational equity is dependent
on two main factors. The first is fairness and the second is inclusion. These two
factors are closely related and are dependent on each other for true academic success
of an educational system. In the Ethiopian context the issue of equity is related to
the expansion of higher education. From the point of equity, girls still have limited
access to the institutions of higher learning as compared with boys. Furthermore,
the majority of young people who are joining higher education institutions are from
urban areas. Disabled students have limited access to higher education institutions
including PHEIs. In this study secondary data were used for analysis. Documents
from MoE, CSA were also used to collect secondary data. The obtained data shows
that even though the majority of the Ethiopian population lives in rural areas,
students coming from the urban areas have high admission rates (access) to tertiary
level education than those coming from rural areas. In the Ethiopian context PHEIs
are of recent phenomenon. However, they are playing their share in opening up
opportunities for young people to get tertiary level education. Despite their positive
role, the issue of access and equity is still a challenge as the data shows and they
need to pay close attention to these issues in order improve the current status quo of
higher education. |
