From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jun 05 2009 - 04:47:36 EDT
Interview with Dr. Tadesse Mehari
M. Negash, Jun 5, 2009
Dr. Tadesse Mehari is the Executive Director of the National Board for
Higher Education (NBHE). Shaebia.org conducted an interview with Dr. Tadesse
regarding the activities of the Board. Excerpts follow:
Has the Board been officially established?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: The NBHE is the highest body mandated to oversee higher
education in the country. As per the Charter drafted for establishing it,
the NBHE shall have 9 members including the Executive Director of the Board.
At the moment, however, the Provisional Committee for the Coordination of
Higher Education (PCCHE) is coordinating, harmonizing and overseeing the
activities of all the institutions of higher education in the country and
higher education as a whole. Members of the Committee include, a Chairperson
from the President's Office, the Executive Director of the NBHE, and Deans
of the colleges. As per the Charter, the nine members of the NBHE shall be
nominated and then be elected by the President of the State.
Q: Are the members of the NBHE full time workers?
Members of the Board shall not be full time workers, except the Executive
Director of the Board who shall function as a full time Chief Executive
Officer of the office of the Board managing its day to day activities.
Q: What are the objectives and strategies of your office?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: The Executive Director's Office shall:
a) Assume full responsibility for the proper function of the personnel and
facilities of the Office of the Board;
b) Facilitate communication and interaction between the Board and the
Governing Bodies as well as among the Institutions of Higher Education
themselves using the resources of the Office of the Board and other public
offices;
c) Make recommendations to the Board on personnel to be hired, appointed or
relieved of duty, and facilities to be acquired by the Office of the Board;
d) Undertake any other task related to Higher Education in Eritrea, and
consistent with the objectives of The Board, that is assigned to him/her by
the Board.
Q: What is your opinion about the quality of education given at the
colleges?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One of the main tasks and objectives of the Board is, of
course, to ensure the quality of education given at our institutions of
higher learning. In addition the Board also works relentlessly to maintain
international standards and the curricula of all the programmes offered in
the colleges are designed in collaboration with our external linkage
partners, which include institutions of higher education outside the
country. We have also designed a mechanism by which all colleges revise and
refine their curricula with relevant ministries and stakeholders
(collectively known as internal linkage partners) in order to ensure
relevance of the programmes they offer.
It is imperative that expanding the higher education system in the country
will ensue in shortage of certain facilities including teaching staff,
books, laboratory equipment, etc. The Government and the Board are however
working hard to replenish the required teaching facilities to all the
colleges through government budget and/or grants or loans obtained. To just
sight one such example, the Government has allocated 20 million USD for
developing higher education, from the loan it has received from India. This
money will be used to procure books, laboratory and workshop materials,
computer facilities and other teaching materials. Accordingly, each college
will have 5 computer labs of 100 computers each connected through a V-SAT to
have a faster internet connectivity so that they can be used by students and
staff.
According to its charter, the NBHE is mandated to accredit all institutions
of higher education in the country and the basic guidelines are now in place
to enable all colleges to undergo "self assessment" of their departments
and/or programmes, which is the first step of accreditation. This exercise
will, without any doubt, enable the colleges to identify their strong and
weak points, thereby design strategy to improve their weak points. All this
will help the Board to maintain quality of education with international
standards.
Q: What is your strategy regarding filling the demand of professionals?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One At the moment we have an acute shortage of skilled
man power in our colleges, schools, ministries and other government offices.
The Government is actually spending over 5 million USD to recruit expatriate
faculty to teach in the colleges.
Q: Do you think the coming graduates will have the capacity to compete with
the outside world?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One As long as our programmes are designed with our
external linkage partners and as long as we maintain international standards
in all our teaching-learning process, there is no reason why our students
cannot be competitive with international students. This has been proved in
the past and I am confident this time also our students will be able to be
competitive. After all, the students joining our colleges in the various
programmes are the best 15-20% of all students sitting the Eritrean
Secondary Education Certificate Examinations every year.
Q: Tell us your relationship with national and foreign institutions or
colleges?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One Through the Linkage Partner Policy that we are
following, we encourage our institutions of higher education to foster
linkage partnerships with their counterparts outside the country. The
collaboration ranges from curriculum design and revision to staff and
student exchange and other relevant matters. This is, in fact one of the
mechanisms to ensure quality of education, maintain international standards
and and create partnership with sister institutions of higher learning.
Thus, almost all colleges have started establishing such linkages with
institutions of higher education outside the country, including George
Washington University (USA), Santa Clara University (Cuba) and universities
in India, Australia, Japan, China, United Arab Emirates, Italy, etc.
Q: What is the curriculum you use?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One The curriculum used in most countries of the world
is almost universal. There is no science that can be taught differently in a
different country. However, one has to customize the curriculum on the basis
of the social, political and economic needs of a given country in order to
make it relevant to the needs of that particular country.
Q: Could you tell us your priorities at the moment?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One Our priority is to provide a better opportunity and
a wider access to tertiary education to deserving nationals all over the
country through regular and distance learning programmes. We also need to
ensure the quality of education given in all our institutions of higher
learning on the basis of international standards because expansion of any
programme might dilute its quality. Thus, in order to fulfill this objective
we need to equip our institutions of higher education with all the necessary
human and material resources required. We have also designed exit strategies
to replace the big percentage of expatriate teaching faculty in our colleges
with qualified national staff in the coming few years so as to safe the huge
amount of hard currency spent in recruiting these expatriate staff. These
include, opening graduate programmes, at least at masters level in some of
our institutions of higher education, giving scholarships to our Graduate
Assistants to be trained abroad, embarking on Distance Learning programmes,
opening private colleges, etc.
Q: Is it practical to have private colleges at the moment?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One The task of providing tertiary education, in my
opinion, should not be left to the government alone. There are a lot of
Eritreans who can pursue their education in private colleges. As long as we
maintain and monitor the standard of education given in the private and
public institution of higher education, there can be no problem of opening
private colleges in the country. This might also give a better opportunity
to those nationals who cannot pursue their tertiary education through the
regular programmes for various reasons. In fact, although not officially
recognized by the NBHE, there were a couple of private colleges enrolling
students in Asmara. We also believe that opening private colleges can
intensify the competition private and public institutions of higher learning
and a better quality of education can be provided.
Q: Do you have anything to add?
Dr. Tadesse Mehari: One With the advent of the NBHE, a lot of important
things have been accomplished to lay the foundation of our relatively young
institutions of higher education. But although these institutions are very
young, most of the academic and administrative staff working in these
institutions have long years of experiences in teaching at tertiary level.
We have only started the long and arduous journey of establishing
institutions of higher education and we believe that we have a long way to
go. But the foundations we are laying today will ultimately enable us to
transform our young institutions of higher education into centers of
excellence in terms of education, research and services to the community.
The young Eritreans should, therefore, seize this opportunity to enhance
their capacity and be able to render their services to the country and
especially to the government and the people of Eritrea who are paying for
their education, at all levels, from the meager resources they have.
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