Paper short abstract:

Based on two and half years of teaching experience as at Addis Ababa University the author will try to discuss personal experience related to the visible decline in the quality of education at Ethiopian government universities as a result of official policy of prioritizing quantity over quality.

Paper long abstract:

In Ethiopia the number of government universities has grown from 5 to over 30 in less than 5 years. The government is putting pressure on the universities to produce a large number of graduates every year, regardless of the resistance of the universities and departments and the arguments that such pressures are proving to be detrimental to the quality of the education received by the graduating students. Issues of plagiarism are rampant at but are often swept aside as irrelevant in the aim of achieving the education related millennium goals that the government is committed to. Korea is often cited a model of such push for quantity over quality which was successful. New policies and teaching systems are regularly implemented in ways that seem urgent to the university administrators but often unreasonable those teaching in the various programs.

Based on two and half years of teaching experience as at Addis Ababa University the author will try to discuss the issues related to the visible decline in the quality of education at Ethiopian government universities as a result of official policy of prioritizing quantity over quality. The paper is based auto-ethnographic material and informal conversations with expatriate and local staff of the period of two and a half years.