Higher Education Policy in Ethiopia: The Position of the Field

With an increased optimism about the role of advanced knowledge and skills in the globalising market economy, higher education (HE) has come to be a centre of strong public interest. Institutional and policy reforms in the subsystem are associated with broad national economic development plans and programs. In aid-recipient countries in sub-Saharan Africa, in line with the World Bank’s ‘knowledge for development’ meta-narrative, governments have closely aligned their poverty reduction strategies with HE development. The Ethiopian case is no exception. In response to external pressures and local needs, the HE subsystem has passed through a series of physical expansion and policy restructuring. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, this paper endeavours to understand the position of the HE policy field vis-à-vis the field of power and the global education policy discourse championed by the World Bank. The analysis focuses on patterns of the interaction, and the way it affects the dynamics of autonomous and heteronomous poles of the field. Keywords: autonomy, Bourdieu, higher education policy, Ethiopia, field theory, the World Bank