Access and Equity as Addressed Through Private Higher Education Institutions (PHEIs)

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.