Abstract
This book analyses persisting inequalities in Ethiopian higher education (HE), and associated policy actions and inactions. It aims to explicate structural factors of educational inequality, analyse policy responses, and outline capabilities-based transformative equity instruments. The book problematizes recent HE expansion and reform initiatives, with a focus on the problem of structural inequality aligned with a repressive gender culture at societal and institutional levels, geographical and ethnic-based marginalization and subordination, external policy influences, and the prevailing politics of control and exclusion. It offers fresh accounts on largely neglected qualitative accounts of inequality and examines policy actions and inactions in response to the problem.
Injustice begins with education, its denial, its mutation, its mutilation.
Daniel Dorling (2015, p. 91)
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise specified, in this book higher education refers to education and training programs delivered at levels of undergraduate and above. It does not include other forms of tertiary education, including education and training in technical and vocational training schools, professional training institutes, colleges that train personnel at the diploma and certificate levels, and other post-secondary schools.
- 2.
The Eritrean, Somali, and Oromo ethno-nationalist groups defined their struggle against the central government as a struggle against colonialism and demanded an outright secession from Ethiopia. The peace conference approved a Transitional Period Charter that granted the Eritrean rebel group (EPLF) the right to launch an independence referendum. In 1993, EPLF succeeded in separating the northern part of Ethiopia as an independent state.
- 3.
Throughout the book, except for in-text citations, I use ‘the WB’ and ‘the Bank’ interchangeably to refer to the International Development Agency branch of the World Bank.
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Molla, T. (2018). Introduction. In: Higher Education in Ethiopia. Education Policy & Social Inequality, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7933-7_1
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