The recent protests at Addis Abeba University (AAU) prompted by unsubstantiated rumours of organ theft, technically known as organ harvesting, revealed that the higher education system in Ethiopia is failing to perform the function society expects from it. The students began a protest based on information that turned out to be nothing but hearsay. Whatever they had heard should have been questioned and their sources checked, as any responsible would-be intellectual would do, before taking action that sparked violence and police intervention.
 

These protests, however, indicate that students are not gaining the tools to process complex information and create an informed discourse. Moreover, when the demonstrations turned into clashes with ethnic undertones, it demonstrated that university students have a lot of pent up aggression that is not being channelled in the constructive manner necessary to aid a poor and politically immature nation on a successful development path.
 

University life is expected to be a time of privilege where young and bright minds spend their time analysing the problems facing their respective society; it is a place where they come to educated conclusions and explore solutions that would most benefit fellow countrymen who must spend their time earning their living and do not have the opportunity or skill set for abstract thought. More concretely, the university must produce the problem solving leaders, often identified as elite; a group of people who think.
 

What does it say when the university community has been virtually silent in the public eye on an issue such as the recent involvement of this country in Somalia and they are not having public discourse on the current dilemma of how to engage Issayas Afeworki's provocative regime, while students erupt over rumours?
 

In one sense it proves that creative outlets for such protest has been absent, partly as a result of a university system failing to be safe and secure. On the other hand, it is questionable if these students have the political freedom to openly express their supposedly informed opinions on such critical issues, thus failing the country in providing an independent and knowledgeable voice.
 

Universities are meant to be bastions of intellectual activity where young people gain the necessary analytical skills to become critical thinkers and thus competent adults. Further, a country's learning facilities must be islands of liberty where the staff and students can conduct scholarly pursuit and places to challenge the most accepted and dearly held conventional truths, without any interference from the state.
 

This requires sufficient resources and a competent human capital to give the students the methodological training required to become the country's future proficient employees and employers.
 

Currently, the state of universities and colleges are a far cry from this ideal. Graduates enter the workforce with a meaningless certificate that indicates nothing more to employers other than time spent listening to unqualified, in some cases, or unmotivated instructors, in most cases, who sometimes do not even bother to look at the works of the students, due to lack of time. Many lecturers are too busy to make ends meet for their families, far from being able to depend on the meagre pay the university provides them.
 

Compare the 3,000 dollars (not including the 175 dollars accommodation allowance) AAU pays to an Indian expatriate to the 1,780 Br paid (before tax) to a lecturer or 2,500 Br for an associate professor.
 

What incentive is their for quality manpower to teach at AAU when the prospects involve, at the topmost echelon, 3,000 Br gross salary for a full professor and a severe lack of academic freedom?
 

The question buried in all this fervour is why universities are severely lacking? Why did AAU, the cornerstone of Ethiopian higher education and with the same budget as over 12 other public university-colleges combined, produce an event so tinged with mistakes?
 

It is clear that the educators at AAU are failing on many fronts, accounted for by their lack of incentive, insufficient salaries, demoralised mood and compounded with fear.
 

How can a political science instructor create informed and investigative minds when he fears that students may inform on him about his perceived political persuasion?
 

Employers complain that the prospective workforce is unemployable after four years of memorisation and insufficient capacity for critical thought. Even the Prime Minister was compelled to tell AAU officials that they need to produce employable people. He was not far from the truth. As it appears, applicants are not a benefit to a company if their only ability is to discharge provided information in a new form. Some have gone so far as to say that these candidates are un-trainable, owing to a programming of inadequacy received at sub-par institutions.
 

Remember the frustration that led Girma Wake, CEO of the Ethiopian Airlines, to write an angry letter to the Ministery of Education questioning the quality of his graduates?
 

However, the government's recent attempts to remedy this sorry state have been more directed at improving numbers of poorly resourced and ill-equipped universities, as well as enrolment rates, than deepening the quality of education offered at government institutions. In a country with almost half the population under the age of 15, providing the capacity for the university enrolment rate to quadruple is an accomplishment. Such quantity improvements, while they may look good on paper reports delivered to bodies of authority, do nothing to provide a poor country with skilled human capital if they are not learning anything of consequence.
 

What can the Ministry of Education (MoE), the responsible government agency, do to change its current deficient policy toward these universities?
 

An innovative system of incentives to keep talent in the university environment is a starting point. As one of the countries suffering the most from brain drain, higher pay for talented graduates, tax incentives, free housing, public recognition and other benefits are clearly needed so that the numbers touted by the government are not overshadowed by that comparably small number of émigrés who could have helped Ethiopia with their unique talents.  
 

But is lack of money the only problem?
 

A university graduate must be capable of constructing a logical argument based on well researched information, coming to a rational conclusion regardless of the implications it may have for drastic change in the current structure of society, economy or the state.
 

The fact that the recent protests morphed into complaints against a separate issue, namely ethnicity and its relation to existing power structures, shows that, either students are not receiving a proper education in the role of a federal state representing, on a regional level, many ethnicities in a fair and balanced manner, or this does not exist in reality. If the latter is the case, constructive activism should break away at the structural impediments to change, not commit violence.
 

Not only is the Ministry of National Defence's (MoND) current fiscal year three billion Birr budget, 15 times higher than AAU's 243.1 million Br budget, a point citizens should question, but it is also an issue university students and faculty themselves should speak out on. Bringing such issues to the forefront of public debate in a well thought out manner is the duty of the university, and allowing open discourse is the responsibility of the government.
 

Moreover, AAU's apparently insufficient budget is not even fully utilised, as a portion is returned to the government coffers due to the University's inability to spend it all. If one of the reasons the University is failing to produce bright graduates is the lack of motivated staff, should not this money be spent to remedy the problem?
 

In countries with more developed educational systems, informed demonstrations that shed light on local, national and international issues are the norm. Educators' opinions are heralded as experts being quoted reliably in publications such as this one, sourced, without fear of incrimination. Students and professors work in tandem to challenge conventional thoughts and existing structures.
 

Unfortunately, the recent demonstrations do not show a methodical planning and clearly defined goal, but neither does the educational system that produced these students. What it does evidence is a lot of tension lying just beneath the surface, lacking a reasonable and productive outlet.
 

Currently, the educational system lies in a prison of fear under the grips of the Ministry. If the universities in Ethiopia are not improved by providing sufficient resources, capable staff and facilities and academic freedom is not protected, the potential for this pressure to explode into more violence is clear. That is regrettable, indeed.
 

What is more troubling is that both the state and the university community are complacent to what is enormously wrong there. Many appear to be indifferent to what is happening or feel helpless to act to change the scene. Underneath the pathetic state of revolting on the basis of mere rumours lies a powerful truth which calls for a moment to revisit the role of universities in Ethiopian society. After more than half a century, AAU's relevance is being questioned as the need to radically reform it is apparent.