Quality: A Many-Headed Hydra? Quality Perception in the Eyes of Different Stakeholders

Abstract

Ethiopia is in the process of establishing an organization to report on the quality of Higher Education, both public and private. The Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency (HERQA) have recently moved into new offices. It has established a Board that meets regularly, has appointed a Director, and is training recently appointed expert and support staff. It will start to undertake its duties at the start of the 1998 (EC) Academic Year. The Ethiopian Higher Education sector that HERQA is to report on is in the process of a rapid growth of public universities from only two, a few years ago, to eight in 2005. Recently the Government announced the establishment of another thirteen new universities, plus an open university. A few years ago there were less than six accredited or pre-accredited private Colleges and Universities. Today the number is more than seventy for the diploma and 34 for the degree programmes. All the PHEIs currently enroll over 39,000 students which are 23% of the total National Enrolment in Higher Education. At the last year’s conference, HE the Minister of Education announced that in the past five years, students from private HEIs account for the 40% of the total enrolment in Higher Education. Nearly all those involved in the Higher Education system recognize the crucial role the agency HERQA will play in the maintenance and assessment of the quality of education offered However, there is one question that is only just recently started to be asked, “What is quality?” And its subsidiary question, “What does quality look like in the Ethiopian context?” Consultation is recognized as being a key component in the process of defining and understanding what quality is. However, one question is, “Consultation with whom?” The list of possible stakeholders in the Higher Education process is a long one: the Government employers, the students, the parents and the HEls themselves (both managers and faculty), donors and probably others. Based on the research undertaken in 2004 on Higher Education System Overhaul (HESO) and in 2005 for HERQA and the Higher Education Strategy Centre (HSC) plus relevant literature, this paper will explore in more detail what is it that the various stakeholders in the Ethiopian Higher Education sector may expect or demand from Higher Education and how their particular agendas and perspectives will influence their own individual notions of what is meant by quality. The paper will also explore what ‘quality’ means in an expanding and the growth of 'massif’ Higher Education system and the lessons for the Higher Education Relevance and Quality Agency. This paper will suggest that it is perhaps unrealistic to expect all the stakeholders in Higher Education to agree and share a common definition of ‘quality’ except in its very broadest sense. However, for HERQA to ensure quality standard, it needs the support and cooperation of all the other stakeholders in Ethiopian Higher Education. ‘Quality’ cannot be achieved in isolation and it cannot be imposed from above. It has to be a communal effort. Eventually all of those involved in the Higher Education Sector, both private and public, will need to work together to ensure that we are all ‘doing the right things in the right way’