Reorganizing Ethiopian Public Higher Education Institutions through Differentiation

​The Government of Ethiopia is working persistently to expand access to higher education (HE).In the last two decades, the number of higher education institutions (HEIs) has reached 46 from 2 full-fledged universities and a handful of colleges offering few programs. Moreover, more than 108 private higher HEIs have been established enrolling a sizable number of students. This has increased the aggregate gross enrollment to about 800,000 from just 52,305 in 1998/99. In Ethiopia each new public university has the tendency of being a ‘comprehensive’ university offering a bit of everything (Ashcroft & Rayner, 2011, Cited by Tassew Woldehanna et al, 2017). Comprehensiveness makes universities lack focus and hence,  there  is a serious problem in terms of the quality of HE provision partly caused by shortage  of qualified  academic  staffs,  library, laboratory, workshops  and insufficient  supplies  of text books. The opening of new universities is not a problem for quality by itself, but this becomes a risk to quality when the needed human power is not there and the needed infrastructure is not available and the existence of poor leadership, and inadequate overall preparation for the establishment of the universities.