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?

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.

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.

What are the objectives and strategies of your office?

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.

What is your opinion about the quality of education given at the colleges?

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.

What is your strategy regarding filling the demand of professionals?

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.

Do you think the coming graduates will have the capacity to compete with the outside world?

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.

Tell us your relationship with national and foreign institutions or colleges?

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.


What is the curriculum you use?

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.

Could you tell us your priorities at the moment?

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.

Is it practical to have private colleges at the moment?

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.

Do you have anything to add?

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.