Partnership between Public and Private Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

The prominence of new approaches such as the New Public Management (NPM) and Alternate Service Delivery (ASD) in the post-cold war era altered the dynamics between state and non-state actors with respect to the delivery of traditionally-public services. As a result, Public Private Partnership (PPP) emerged as a phenomenon. Since then PPP has become one of the very important developmental tools with a number of different models pertinent to different sectors. It is generally regarded as an effective means to bring resources and expertise of public and private institutions together towards common goals. As such the private and public participants as well as the general public and other stakeholders harvest benefits from the effective utilization of PPP. Although PPP is much more popular in sectors such as infrastructure development and health services, it is also becoming a common practice in the field of higher education. While a different combination of public and private institutions/organizations - where at least one of them is an academic institution - constitute PPP in higher education, Lee (2008) noted the various forms of partnerships between public and private higher learning institutions. Considering the different benefits that can accrue from PPP and the level of development and variety of challenges the Ethiopian higher education is facing, it can be argued that the effective development and utilization of PPP is of paramount important. However, the current state of PPP in the Ethiopian higher education is underdeveloped. This paper, by looking at primary data, collected through interviews, explored the potential benefits and challenges of partnership between public and private higher education institutions in Ethiopia