Managing Students’ Diversity in Ethiopian Public Universities: Practices and Challenges

Abstract

This study explored the practice and challenges of students’ diversity management in Ethiopian public universities. A convergent parallel mixed method design was used to guide the study. To this end, stratified random and simple random sampling methods were used to select eight public universities and 458 participants of the study. Furthermore, purposive, availability, and snowball sampling methods were used to draw qualitative research participants. While a modified version of the campus climate for diversity instrument was used to collect the quantitative data, key informant interview and document review were employed as qualitative data gathering tools. Frequencies, means, an independent t-test, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the quantitative data while the qualitative data was analyzed thematically. Finally, the findings unveiled that the internal diversity-related policy practice, leadership commitment towards diversity promotion, diversity-related co-curricular activities, and curricular activities related to students’ diversity management were rated as good. The study further disclosed a significant perception difference in leadership commitment towards diversity among students of different generations of universities, F (3, 454) =6.034, p=0.000). Moreover, the qualitative finding showed that the absence of well-planned strategies, the deficiency of the curriculum to respond to diversity-related issues, and lack of commitment of university leaders to promote diversity and act immediately during conflicts was mentioned as gaps in managing students’ diversity. Finally, it was recommended that due attention should be given by MoSHE and respective public universities in diversifying the top leadership, academic staff, and student body by putting appropriate strategies in place.

Examining Trends and Effectiveness of Academic Institutions’ Website Content

“…As indicated above, university websites were the main sources for this study. Website contents were collected from 16 Ethiopian universities, and they were grouped into four categories based on their year of foundation: first generation, second generation, third generation, and fourth generation; as in the classification outlined by Manaze and Ford (2021), with first-generation universities having been established before 2007, second-generation universities in 2007, third-generation universities in 2011, and fourthgeneration universities in 2016.…”

Revisiting “Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors”: A Commentary on Navigating Gender in Higher Education

“…Ironically, the substantive research extolling the importance of university students' sense of belonging to education outcomes (Crawford et al, 2024;Kirby & Thomas, 2022;Manaze & Ford, 2021;Museus et al, 2017) is not often applied to higher education employees. Positive organizational behavior scholarship documents that the individual and collective benefits of belonging extend to workplaces (Achor, 2018;Brassel et al, 2022;Edmondson, 2019;Miranda-Wolff, 2022).…”