BY MULUGETA GUDETA
There was an old story that was circulating at one time or another regarding the number of educated persons in India. It was often said that if you throw a stone on a crowd of Indians the very likelihood is that it will fall on the head on Indian with a PhD in some field of study. This may be true or not but the implication is that India is a country with a very high proportion of college educated citizens. That has proved to be true because the economic miracle India registered since it gained independence from Britain in 1948 is more than impressive.
India is now one of the biggest ten economies in the world. And the miracle is obviously the product of education and the thirst for knowledge that have characterized Indians of later generation. Education implemented to solve Indian problem obviously produced the miracle. China is also another Asian country that has changed education into a tool of economic development. western civilization and advancement is also based on hundred years of educational development or knowledge development.
From a net importer of food where floods and other natural calamities wreaked havoc on a huge and impoverished in the decades following independence, India is now a country flooded with agricultural products and famines have become things of the past. This radical change from rags to riches was accomplished thanks to the spread of education and the growth of science and technology. Indian students won scholarships to the West an masse but returned to their country after graduation and contributed hugely to the development of their country.
Judging by the numbers of young people graduating from various universities across the country, we can safely say that Ethiopia is one of the few African countries where higher education is growing by leaps and bounds. That is to say numerically. Tens of millions of young people are attending schools across the nation. Tens of thousands of them are graduating every year from colleges and universities.
We are dealing with the Indian experience of higher education in an effort to shed light on what needs to be done to overcome similar challenges Ethiopia is now facing. We have deliberately chosen the Indian experience in higher education which is similar to ours. To this end, it is important to look at the main objectives of India’s National Policy on Education drafted in 1986 in which the objectives of higher education were outlined as consisting of five major points.
These points are summarized as being, one of “seeking and cultivating new knowledge, vigorously and fearlessly in the spirit of truth, providing the right kind of leadership in all walks of life, providing competent men and women train in agriculture, the arts, medicine, science and technology, striving to promote social justice and to foster in the teachers and students and through them in society generally the attitudes and values needed for developing the good life.”
If we compare the Indian higher education policy with ours, we realize that they are pretty similar in essence but different in the pace and seriousness of their implementation. For instance, seeking and cultivating new knowledge is the spirit of higher education both in Ethiopia and India. However, Indians are comparatively more successful in implementing it while in Ethiopia it largely remains on paper.
Even if Ethiopian students from higher institutes of education are keen to follow up their studies with the same spirit, most of them abandon it once they graduate and enter the labyrinths of the job market from which there is no easy way out. In the process the objective of using their knowledge to the good of society and their own lives is lost never to be recovered. This does not however imply that the Indian higher education system is a freewheeling one and that there are no challenges along the way. In a study entitled EDUCATION: KNOWLEDGE OR EMPLOYMENT LIFE-SKILL DEVELOPMENT AND LIFELONG LEARNING Anshul Joshi of Ramjas College, University of Delhi writes that, “There has always been a debate on educational reforms in our country, by making it more student friendly, but our current educational policies have failed to analyze the mindset of youth that, what “THEY” exactly want from the system. Today our schools spend more time separating successful and
unsuccessful students rather than teaching them. Education has become more sort of a psychological burden with a shadow of uncertainty on the minds of youth rather than an enjoyable & learning experience. There is an undue stress of entrance exams, career prospects, jobs and worry of future attached with education among youth.”
However, the author of the article concludes his observations by shedding positive light on future prospects by saying that, “Many times in our lives we are crumpled and thrown into dirt because of difficult circumstances. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you must remember that you will never lose your value. You are special. Do not let circumstances define who you are. Remember it’s the toughest time which will either break you or make you. And at last, I would conclude by saying that “An optimistic person finds opportunities in difficulties where as a pessimistic person finds difficulties in opportunities.”
The same can be said about the trials and tribulations faced by graduates from higher education institutes in Ethiopia by difficult circumstances like their peers in India. The most important thing is, as the above-quoted author of the article says, not to let circumstances define who we are and remember that it’s the toughest time which will either break us or make us.
It is indeed depressing to observe in Ethiopia that many graduates are defined and even overcome by circumstances and that the toughest time tend to break many of them. There are also very resilient youngsters who do not consider unemployment as the end of the long road. They always see light at the end of the dark tunnel and strive to work hard after they come out of college and take up any job that comes their way. Others are creating some kind of employment for them by using the skills, support or any resources at their disposal.
Under the military or Derg regime, the state was at once an educator and job provider. Young people go to college that are free from tuition. After graduation they expected the state to give them jobs although they may not fit into their trainings or expectations. This was in fact a serious shortcoming of governance under the so-called socialist system, because it deprived private citizens of the initiative to create jobs or look for some. The state and the citizens are supposed to be one and the same thing and this is the basic fallacy that made “socialism” very unpopular in Ethiopia. The fact that economic, social and cultural development result from individual strivings has led to the decline and fall of most socialist systems in the world. China may be an exception and it succeeded the moment it understood this shortcoming of socialism and switched to what it calls “market socialism” or the combination of state and individual initiative in every field including education and culture.
China produced the most important writers, artists or philosophers after the political reforms that were introduced more than 30 years ago, here in Ethiopia the ideological remnants of “state-led” development are still strong in the minds of succeeding generations; although in the last 30 years or so, the state or government has introduced some reforms in the educational and the job market.
The state does not cover all tuition fees and students are sharing the costs of their education and government is no more the sole job provider as it used to be in the past. The state can provide a share of the job opportunities but it is not the sole job creator. The private sector is relatively weaker in this field but it will ultimately become the dominant player in the job market although it will take a long time and tremendous efforts to arrive at that stage.
More realistic minded college graduates are taking any job that comes their way. Nowadays, it is not unusual to meet college graduates who work at road construction projects as masons or at stone queries that produce cobblestones. In the old days, it was considered a shame or something odd to work at stone queries after graduating in management or electrical engineering.
Nowadays, such views are leaving the place for realistic understanding of the situation because youngsters are expected to do something for a living in order to survive the tough times unless they depend on wealthier families or on relatives in the Diaspora for steady incomes. Even if there is obvious good will on the part of the government to give jobs to its educated students, it cannot do so because it has not the necessary resources to play the role of a good parent to these young boys and girls.
There are also exceptionally visionary youngsters who go to libraries and wherever knowledge is available in order to build their minds for future intellectual and life engagements. These are the avid book readers, researchers and critical thinkers who are few in numbers but survive in the midst of all the chaos and deprivation. In fact the road from formal education to individual knowledge seeking is not very complicated. As available information shows, “In fact one leads to another. The primary difference between the two is that education is formal process whereas knowledge is informal experience. Education is acquired through the formal institutions like school, colleges and universities, whereas knowledge is gained from the real life experiences.”
All these arguments should not however cover up the fact that Ethiopia’s educational system itself needs to undergo deep transformations to live up to the expectations of creating a well-rounded citizen. As he puts it, “Education has a very broad prospective which is not just limited to making someone civilized, economically independent, broad minded, skilled, sharp, well – trained, socially well acceptable, and so on…..but it is about total transformation and empowerment of someone’s personality on all the aspects to make a person much better, constructive and valuable resource for the society.”
The Ethiopian Herald July 23/2022
