The Rift Valley University (RVU) will absorb all branches of the Central Health College (CHC) following the suspension of two of CHC’s branches in Bole District and Bahir Dar by the Higher Education Relevance & Quality Agency (HERQA) for quality and standard reasons.
The former owners of CHC have a 35 per cent share in the University, which has now grown following the takeover, according to Abenet Girmaye (PhD), former owner and president of CHC.
The decision to shut down the branches was based on quality assessments made by the agency four months ago, said Tarekgne Geressu, public relation officer at the agency.
The college failed to fulfill several requirements of the agency. Issues included exceeding of the maximum number of students per class, the unproportion of academic staff to the number of students and low professional qualifications of lecturers. Lecturer qualifications were found to be lacking at the CHC’s Bahir Dar and Bole branches, according to Tarekgne.
CHC operated from six branches; three in Addis Abeba, located at Bole, Shola, and Lancia and three in Hawassa, Bahir Dar, and Adama. It boasted 5,000 students and 500 staff members across all of its six branches.
Established in 2002, with 50 million Br initial capital, the college has graduated 15,000 graduals since it was launched.
CHC has now become part of RVU, following its takeover. This includes all staff, students and associated assets, according to the statement by both the owners of RVU, Dinku Deyasa and the former owner of CHC.
But the agency told Fortune that, it was not aware of the transfer, which should have been made known to it before any transfer taking place. Any higher education institution should notify the agency when it opens new branches, Tarekgne said.
RVU was established in 2000 and started giving classes in Adama with 154 evening program students and five part time faculty staff. Now the university claims 24 campuses, 3,000 staff and 150,000 students.
“RVU agreed with CHC to take over all its assets, staff and students without any change to the monthly fees the students were paying,” said Dinku Deyasa, RVU owner.
Hailemichel Tadesse is a third year health officer student at the former CHC, Lancia branch, which has now become the Lancia branch of RVU.
“Personally I was not upset by the change. RVU has recently become a university, so I think this is a good thing,” Hailemichael said.
The shift followed a legal requirement which, according to the higher education proclamation, states that any institution whose accreditation has been revoked shall take appropriate measures so that students and trainees continue their studies in other appropriate institutions. “We transferred our students to RVU based on this,” said Abenet.
CHC also passed almost all of its assets to RVU.
The agency has already made quality assessment on many educational institutions nationwide, and 19 educational institutions have been found with problems. Among those, seven have been ordered to stop delivering distance education: two colleges, one in Addis Abeba- Tropical College, its services were suspended for one year, whereas another college, Reda college has completely shut down. The remaining 10 institutions have received a letter of warning demanding them to upgrade their quality as soon as possible.
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