Relating mechanisms of higher education and research closely to the reality in the society for rural transformation in the Amhara region, Ethiopia

Abstract

Higher education and research in Ethiopia is going through a decisive phase of reform and expansion. As a system it is increasingly re-quired to respond and gear adequately to the development needs of the society and the country. This change is taking place through a government-led radical review of the system’s status and challenges, and by devising mecha-nisms of consensus building, as well as own-ership and overcoming the resistance to change. Higher education and research institutions of Bahir Dar and Gondar Universities and ARARI, in Ethiopia are not satisfactorily responsive to rural transformation in addressing problems of small-scale farmers. This calls for responsive education and research that addresses farmers’ constraints. Thus, to survey the suitability/ap- propriateness of the current training pro-grammes of higher education and research in-stitutions to address the actual problems of farmers is of paramount importance. To this ef-fect, tools such as interview guide, check-list and questionnaires were put to use for data collection. Primary data was collected from ob-servation, focus group discussions and key in-formant interviews. Descriptive statistics for quantitative data and triangulation for qualitative data were the prime techniques for data analysis. The result of the study shows that university heads, instructors, students, research heads, researchers and employees rated the suggested mechanisms, namely “inviting speakers from industries and farming community”, “visiting guest lecturers” and “special entrepreneurial project”, as the top most important for ensuring training and research closely to the reality in the society of Amhara region in facilitating agricul-tural growth and rural transformation. Besides, employers and farmers responded that fresh graduates are deficient with relevant technical skills because of less emphasis on experiential learning on higher education. Therefore, the curriculum for the training should give much weight to incorporate these suggested mecha-nisms and the higher institutions curriculum should be arranged in such a way that the train-ees could obtain appropriate technical know- how.