A longtime friend of Ethiopia’s wealthiest man, Arega Yirdaw (PhD) is widely remembered for serving as the CEO of MIDROC Technology Group, a conglomerate of 26 companies, for around two decades.
Arega started his career as an aerospace engineer at Boeing, and served at Ethiopian Airlines for a decade before joining the team at MIDROC, where he remained until his resignation four years ago,
He has since dedicated himself full-time to leading a higher education institution. He is currently the president of Unity University, also part of the MIDROC Group owned by Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi.
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With a diverse educational background, including experience in the field itself, he is renowned for his enthusiasm for education. The Reporter Magazine‘s Bewket Abebe spoke with him to gain insights into the current state of education in Ethiopia and the way forward. EXCERPTS:
The Reporter Magazine: As the new academic year begins this month, students at all levels, from rural districts to major cities and from kindergarten to university, return to school with renewed enthusiasm and fresh spirits. That was the trend. However, this tradition has been challenged by various factors in the last few years. Millions of students in different regions, including Tigray, Oromia, and Amhara, are currently unable to attend school. Last year, in the Amhara Regional State alone, over 6 million students were unable to attend classes. This academic year, only 2 million of the anticipated 7 million students have registered so far. What do you foresee as the long-term consequences of these trends?
Arega Yirdaw (PhD):Any child who is supposed to go to school should go to school. Specifically, in those particular regions, many schools have reportedly been closed, and lots of students have not been going to school. Unfortunately, students do not just stop aging. Once a student misses an academic year, it’s lost. Students are losing up to three years of schooling.
The impact is going to be very serious. High schools need input from elementary school. These inputs will be disrupted. Universities need input from high school. The same thing will happen there. The impact will be serious. Even after the conflict ends, it will take time to rebuild the infrastructure. Unfortunately, the damage is not like any production item. If you produce Mirinda and if there is a bad product, you can immediately see that. This is not like that. You damage people, and the damage is going to last a lifetime. That makes it very serious.
The solution is to have peace. Peace is something given to us by the Almighty, like air, water, sunshine, and the like. I hope and I pray that people will wake up and see the damage we are creating.
There are people who have a responsibility to fix the problem. I hope they are working on it. But the longer it goes like this, the more damage that we are going to see.
I know the value of education. I wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t helped me to go to school. And I really wish to see those kids going to school again.
Nearly a decade ago, you conducted a study on the role of governance on quality of education in higher education. At the time you were the CEO of MIDROC Technology Group, which means you had more responsibilities than conducting research. What sparked your interest in education? Do you feel a particular connection or passion for this field?
At the time I was running MIDROC Technology Group, Unity University joined us. It was transferred from its previous owner to us. My background is engineering. I had dealt with aerospace engineering and aviation. Then I came to Ethiopia and became engaged in industries including gold mining and real-estate. Suddenly, there comes a university, which is a bit different from what I had been doing. Then I decided to know more about running a university as it requires more knowledge and attention. I decided to attend a PhD program in educational management. And I wanted to do my dissertation on something practical. That is how I conducted that study.
It was a dissertation?
Yes, it was. But I converted it to a book when learning that it became good learning material.
What were the key things you learned while conducting the research?
At the time, I accurately predicted that our education system had a lot of problems. I wish people had listened at that time. Now people are talking about the quality of education going down. But we came to know about it years back. Unfortunately, nothing has been done.
What, in your view, are the pressing challenges facing the education sector today?
Everybody is now talking about the fact that our high school graduates are not becoming successful. Our education system is failing our students, as evidenced by the alarming 95 percent failure rate in high school exams.
Generally speaking, it is not a good time to talk about education. I mean you don’t enjoy it because success is something everybody wants to see. Apparently, people who are involved in this sector right now are not succeeding. You really feel unhappy about it.
People are now discussing the result of what we have done wrong. I do not usually hear people talking about the root causes and the ways out. I came to know that the quality of education is in trouble when I wrote the book [about a decade ago].
In education, if you expand suddenly, you sacrifice quality. That is what is happening. Some argue that students fail exams because they are nervous, there was no cheating, and so on. While those might be factors, they can’t explain the 95 percent failure rate. The root cause has been there for almost two decades.
First, we introduced a grade 10 exam, forcing students to choose between continuing to grades 11 and 12 or going to TVET or other programs. At 10th grade, students are too young to make such a crucial career decision.
Second, we reduced the number of enrollment years for first-degree studies from four to three, citing the ‘preparatory program.’ But this change doesn’t benefit preparatory school students. They haven’t been given any of the university courses they could have taken.
Introducing a good idea is welcome. But when you introduce something new, make sure it’s an improvement over the old system. That was the first phase of the disaster. Then the second came. After all the damage was done, they said, ‘that was a mistake. Let’s get back to the system where students complete at 12th grade instead of 10th. Let’s make the number of years first degree university students attend four years instead of three’.
The disaster continued; they started building a number of universities and said ‘let’s fill these universities’ and everybody got excited. In order to fill those universities built everywhere at once, they started accepting students with scores as low as 25 percent out of 100. That continued for years.
To hide this, they had to do some camouflaging using fictitious raw numbers. They came up with the terminology ‘MekurechaNetib’. Instead of percentages, raw numbers were used because when you speak in percentage, anyone can easily see how low a certain score is. They also came up with this fashion of ‘Abkaw’. That way, even the low-performing students graduate from universities. These are all political decisions, not academic decisions.
Then came the third phase of disaster. They came and said ‘no student should go to university unless they score 50 percent’. Excellent. The whole world knows that you should score at least 50 percent. But they had been messing it up. They wanted to implement the policy without considering this fact. They said students should take exams. Then, more than 95 percent of students failed. I do not have a problem with examinations. But you give examinations to people who are prepared. You have a system that has been producing students who score 25 percent and pass. Then suddenly within the same system, you expect a 50 percent score without doing anything with the system.
If you have a system that fails 95 percent of its students, it’s fundamentally flawed. We should not just blame the students; the system itself is broken.
In the first year of implementing the policy, only three percent of students passed. Now, the pass rate is 5.4 percent. Will this reality change next year? No. It may rise to six or seven percent. Yet over 90 percent will continue to fail. Nothing has changed in the system. Sudden expansion in education has an impact. Everybody has now started realizing.
To what extent do you believe the changes made in education policies every time a regime changes, given that they are often politically motivated as you mentioned, are affecting the quality of education in Ethiopia?
The true impact of an education system takes 20 to 30 years to reveal itself. This creates opportunities for politicians to avoid accountability. My advice is to treat education differently; avoid making drastic changes for at least 50 years. When changes are necessary, implement them gradually, as intelligent countries do.
You have been advocating for the independence of the education sector regulatory body. What significant changes do you believe would occur if this body were to become independent? Can you identify specific issues that you attribute to its current lack of independence?
The authority is currently under the Ministry of Education. This means the Education Minister oversees both the authority and several universities. That is in addition to the Ministry itself. If the authority were independent and reported to Parliament, it could freely evaluate all universities.
An independent authority would ensure equal treatment for all educational institutions. It has an advantage; it makes them stronger. There will not be any dichotomy. That is why we have been advocating for its independence.
The mismatch between what higher educational institutions produce and what the labor market needs have continued. The demand for skilled professionals from the industry continues. Despite millions of graduates being unemployed, industries struggle to find suitable candidates. In this context, what is Unity University’s experience in offering relevant and helpful programs, assisting graduates in connecting with potential employers, and playing its part in changing the unpleasant reality?
University-industry linkage is a practice all over the world. While the gap between university graduates and industry needs exists everywhere, it is particularly wide in Ethiopia due to the fact that industries are not yet strong enough.
The system is really important in Ethiopia, too. It has actually been there. Now, there is a new proclamation (University-Industry Linkage Proclamation) with better teeth.
Even small industries require skilled workers. Industries should work closely with universities for their own sake. Universities must ensure their graduates have good job prospects by working closely with industries. That relationship is important.
Let me give you an example. When I led MIDROC Gold, we had many expats at the beginning.
To address this, I established a mining engineering program at Unity University. The curriculum was developed with the Ministry of Mines and was a five-year program. Our graduates now work at MIDROC Gold. It’s a successful model.
When considering university-industry linkages, it’s important to remember that universities should offer courses relevant to the local industry but not be limited to it. Universities should not solely focus on producing graduates for the local market. If the local industry can’t absorb all graduates, the university should not cancel its programs. Universities should have a universal scope.
Education indexes released by various organizations do not paint a positive picture of Ethiopia’s educational performance. A recent report from an organization that ranks countries’ education systems ranked Ethiopia 167th among 177 countries surveyed worldwide, placing it among the ten worst performers. While it is understandable that these rankings may have some subjectivity due to technical factors, they still provide a general overview. As someone who is fully dedicated to the education sector and leads an educational institution, what do such findings signify to you?
I feel very unhappy about it; sometimes helpless. My only advice is to approach education with a more gradual and sustainable approach. Frequent, radical changes disrupt the system and harm students who are already struggling. We need to be mindful of the impact these changes have on individuals.
