2025/01/15 by Teodros Solomon Bezabeh, Bezabeh, Teodros Solomon
Social Sciences · #Education Policy #Education System #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities #Globalization #Higher Education #Higher Education Governance and Development #Human Capital #World Bank
paper · doi:10.71624/vsgsm330
openalex created_date 2019/12/05 · openalex publication_date 2025/01/15 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
The World Bank (WB) as an international policy transfer and diffusion agent has been actively involved in orchestrating and driving higher education systems. The Bank contains the world’s largest international development research institute and is also believed to be the greatest funder of higher education. In this article, I have tried to show the role of the WB in Ethiopian higher education system using human capital theory as an analytical framework. The WB is the major international organization that plays a pivotal role in the Ethiopia higher education system. The Bank’s influence on Ethiopia higher education ranges from offering financial support to reforms and some research project and sponsoring short -term and long-term training to providing policy advisory services. The WB provides various financial and expertise-based contributions to Ethiopian higher education. The Bank also exercised its symbolic power by providing policy prescriptions in consultancy and research and setting the frame of references through analytical reports, sector reviews, and thematic workshops . Despite these contributions, the Bank is not creating sufficient spaces for local actors to critically challenge and criticize the recommendations of the Bank. The involvement of the Bank beyond the mere financial support has been the subject of criticism by researchers and academicians of the country. The article maintains that the WB is one of the manifestations of the process of globalization that has complicated the policy-making process of the Ethiopian higher educational institution.