Educational Policy and Planning

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Browsing Educational Policy and Planning by Subject "Campus Climate for Diversity,"

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    Students‘ Diversity Management in Ethiopian Public Universities: Practices and Challenges
    (Addis Ababa University, 2020-10) Manaze, Mesfin; Zeleke, Befikadu(PhD); Ford, Angel
    This study explored the practice and challenges of Ethiopian public universities students‘ diversity management by employing convergent parallel mixed method design. To this end, data was collected from 458 quantitative and 24 qualitative study participants the study found out that the campus climate for ethnic and religion diversity in Ethiopian public universities to be moderately positive with the existence of pockets of dominant group of students and ethnic related conflicts among students. On the other hand, the sampled universities students‘ diversity management practice was also found to be good. The study also found out that there is a weak, statistically significant positive relationship between students‘ attitude towards diversity and their sense of belonging towards their university, diversity related policies, leadership commitment to promote diversity, and curricular activities practice of the sample universities and students‘ pluralistic orientation. On the other hand, the study found moderate, statistically significant positive relationship between co-curricular activities practice of the sample universities and students‘ pluralistic orientation. The main challenges for Ethiopian public universities to properly manage their students‘ diversity were also found to be political instances of the country, fake news circulating in the social media and political activists/groups focus on public university students. Moreover, the absence of well-planned strategies including invitation of influential figures to discuss sensitive diversity related issues, the inadequacy of the curriculum to respond to diversity related issues, and lack of commitment of university leaders to promote diversity and act immediately during conflicts were mentioned as gaps in managing students diversity at public universities. Based on the above findings, it was concluded that the campus climate for diversity in the sampled universities to be moderately positive and students‘ diversity management to be good. The study also concluded that challenges of managing students‘ diversity were associated with external influences like politics and absence of well planned strategies and homogeneity of the universities community in their part. 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 to better promote diversity, public universities and MoSHE should work to make the curriculum responsive to diversity and strengthen the co-curricular activities that can promote diversity. Key words: Diversity, Campus Climate for Diversity, Diversity Management, Public Universities