The graduation season in Addis Ababa, and in the country at large, coincides with the rainy season. Universities, colleges as well as private institutions of higher learning were busy in the last few weeks, honoring their students with degrees and diplomas. These are age-old practices that give rare moments of joy to the graduating students, their parents and the institutions engaged in training and preparing the next generation of educated Ethiopians who will steer the country towards a better future.
Graduation seasons are moments of joy anywhere in the world where modern higher education has developed for some time. The events are symbolic in the sense that they usher in the transition from the world `of learning to that professional life. The number of graduates is staggering indeed. Every year, tens of thousands of young people leave colleges and universities even though the job market is already saturated to bursting point. There is a kind of “inflation’ of college graduates. There is low demand and high supply, to use economic jargon.
At one point in its history, India was said to have produced a high number of educated people so much so that it was sarcastically observed that if you throw a stone in the crowd, it is likely that it will fall on a degree holder. How India managed its educated generations is another story that would take us into another realm.
By the way, India’s revolution in primary, secondary and higher education is staggering indeed. India has conducted a revolution in its agricultural sector which is known as the Green Revolution that freed the country from perennial famines and made it a net exporter of food and food products. By the same token, India has developed an educational system that is often referred to as the best in the world in terms of quality and outreach. There is a great deal that African countries like Ethiopia can learn to improve the quality of their educational system and curriculum that is still one of the weakest links in their quest for building modern nations states capable of competing with the most advanced countries in the world.
Its progress in the educational sector was also a radical one. Under British colonial rule, education in India was reserved to the higher classes in the cast system and for those who could migrate to Britain to pursue higher education. Now every Indian has the right and the means of taking their dreams to a higher level by staying at home and pursuing quality education that is almost next to none.
The same process seemed to take place here in Ethiopia at least initially when dozens of universities were built in various regions and when tens of thousands the sons and daughters of farmers and those from the lower classes could easily benefit from the new opportunities. This may be taken as a positive aspect of the educational progress that was taking place in Ethiopia. While India could absorb its educated people through the industrial growth that was taking place parallel to the educational progress it was making, Ethiopia’s industrial growth has not so far managed to absorb the hundreds of thousands of educated youths as the most important factors of further growth that has lasted for decades.
The Indian educational sector was radically transformed during the post-independence period. The education system started from a stronger base because it was influenced or shaped by the colonial British educational system that is famed for its high quality and rigorous learning and teaching process that is famed around the world. Educational reform in Ethiopia has started from a low quality base because more focus was given to quantity rather than quality. The system was working at a breakneck speed to prepare the skilled manpower needed for the growing industrial and administrative sectors and when the process reached its saturation point rather quickly, things started to stagnate or fizzle.
Asymmetric growth between the numbers of graduates every year and the availability of employment opportunities have exacerbated the situation although the production of new graduates has still continued unabated. Millions of school age children are still attending schools at all levels of the system. All this is a positive trend that needs to be commended. However, the nagging problem of providing quality education needs to be addressed as number one priority in the process of the ongoing educational reform.
For tens of thousands of new college graduates in Ethiopia, the hilarious moments of graduation day is quickly followed by a depressing moment of disenchantment with the job market that cannot absorb all if not even half of the new graduates. Despite all the challenges, graduation time has always been a moment of great anticipation and great hope.
If we go by what happened last week for instance, the streets of Addis were filled by marry making crowds that were going to attend graduation parties where they were invited to enjoy lavish foods, drinks and music where guests forgot all their worries of daily life in order to enjoy themselves. This moment was particularly notable for its coincidence with the eve the 16-day fasting ritual that starts on the first day of the month of Nehassie and ends on the 16th day.
The orthodox faithful call this fasting period /Felseta. You are supposed to eat fasting foods during the following 15 or 16 days. The most ardent among the fasting crowd do not touch food until midday while others push the time for breaking their fast a little further. These are the most fundamentalist faithful among the laity.
Anyway, the coincidence between the graduation weekend and the approaching of the short fasting period seemed to have produced the perfect opportunity for good eating a lot of drinking and merrymaking. If you had a chance to attend some of the graduation and try to make a few observations, what might strike your eyes is the age of the new graduates. They are mostly very young, mostly in their twenties early thirties. Many of them have their first degrees while quite a substantial number of them have their second or third degrees. We have an unprecedented number of young doctors from different fields of learning and they have the legitimate reason to be extremely joyous.
Some of the graduating students come from better off families and others from middle class people or families with lower incomes. The level of celebration and the foods and drinks on offer to the guests attending the occasion may also vary in quality and diversity but people enjoy those rare moments of happiness whatever is on offer. Mobile cameras are busy on such occasions while guests and hosts work hard to capture those happy moments for posterity. Glasses click everywhere and music flows from blaring loudspeakers as the crowd of people dance to the tunes and traditional melodies. Under such circumstances, neither heavy rains nor freezing temperatures could freezer the high mood that engulf those parties.
Then follow the moments of tears, emotions and tender hugging in the middle of so much joy. Those are however tears of joy. The new graduates, particularly female ones hug their parents and shake with tears in order to show their love and respect to their fathers and mothers who worked hard and suffered so much to pay for the education of their children. It is particularly on the days of their graduation that these young people realize the hardship and dedication that was invested in their education by their loved ones. Such moments are moments of reflections so to say away from the pre-graduation hustle.
There is often another ceremony whereby the graduates are lavished with gifts, congratulatory words and cheers, music and dances. The gifts may range from high or modest monetary donations to silver and gold wares as well as diverse objects without excluding expensive drinks like whiskey and vodka. All this is not bad as long as the graduates manage to avoid sinking into a depressive mood soon after their graduation when they realize that landing a job may look like the proverbial camel that tried to pass through the eye of a needle.
The post-graduation period may be one of the most trying moments in the lives of the newly minted degree holders whose dream of getting high-paying jobs might be aborted simply because of the economic situation cannot meet the needs of a growing number of graduate every year.
The old myths of new graduates getting white collar jobs in clean and well-furnished offices are already proved to be nothing but an unrealistic dream. This was a myth that was a myth whose origin goes back to the days of the first or second generation of college students who were fewer in number and life was much easier than it was then. The nascent state bureaucracy was eager to hire young educated Ethiopians who would contribute a great deal to the modernization of the country’s administration. There were more job opportunities than the number of graduates and it was easier for many of them to lead a relatively comfortable life right after college.
Nowadays, it requires patience, realism and stubbornness for college graduates to get employment opportunities. India and China may serve as good examples of countries that have managed to use their young and educated citizens in a productive manner by encouraging massive exodus of new graduates to developed countries where they pursued educational opportunities that could later be used in the economic development of their respective countries. There is no reason why Ethiopia cannot utilize similar mechanisms or policies to encourage its college graduates to seek opportunities in advanced learning in the Western countries and in India in particular where language might not be a barrier to learning. The other alternative is to adjust between the demand for higher education and student enrolments in colleges and universities in order to avoid what we called above the “inflation” in the number of degree holders.
For now, let the new graduates enjoy the present moment of big break from four or five years of continued studies. Let them click their glasses at graduation parties until they feel sufficiently relaxed so that they would tackle the post-graduation challenges with less stress and more relaxation. As the rain and cold of winter subside, the hot moments of graduation frenzy are likely to give way to more sober thoughts and decisions. When emotions dissipate, passions are likely to give way to serious reflection.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 11 AUGUST 2023
