Does the university have any research collaboration program with other universities? Does the university have a staff development program by its own initiative? Does the university have an actual and true prospect to open any postgraduate program? Does the university currently able to retain a number of its experienced staff? All the answer is no! Unless one swathe the actual truth, the reality is that the university is never towards a development where one can expect new ideas, a room for innovative research and free flow of ideas and the birthplace of future responsible citizens, teachers, managers, scientists and leaders.

Except for small workshops or seminars in which some Indians from the university read passages and statements from books or their own opinion as “papers”, except for the attempt of small number of experienced individual staff members, the university, since it has been declared to be a university, hasn’t contributed any that can meet a university ideal as I stated above. In addition a significant number of experienced and competent staff members have left the university recently due to the absence of academic leadership that encourages research and staff development as well as free academic spirit expected in a university. It is a failure to the leadership of the university that a number of these staff are welcomed by other universities inside and outside of the country.

In fact such endeavour implies creating the necessary infrastructure for teaching and research, and a willing, accommodating and efficient management system, both administrative and academic, that facilitates but not stifles the spirit and process of higher learning and research. While the university has been given, by donors and government funds a relatively significant amount of contribution for the development of its infrastructure a look into the current management body of Bahir Dar University shows that the leadership nether has the competence nor the experience to transform the university up to its expectations.

The current leaders are primarily failed teachers they are all evaluated by their respective students as poor teachers. A poor teacher is in fact a poor manager The current leaders at Bahir Dar University are individuals who are simply handpicked leaders who are despots and run the university not as academic institution but as their own fiefdoms. Most of all they are either marionette who are helpless in the execution of a university ideals which is in principle entrusted to them or bungling mangers who are always busy in engaged in with or executing trifling tasks and daily routines which should have been left for lower administrative units even though it is created and brought as a result of the red-tape of the ministry of education.

A typical feature of the leadership of the Bahir Dar University is that they are not transparent and always impose their decision against the academic community including staff. Most of all since the ministry of education only listen to them they disguises the actual problem at the ground and provide a picture which suits their interest. As despots they operate not by consent and they, together with their loyalists, are turning the university into structures that are rigid and unresponsive to the problems and concerns of the students and staff. The current state of the university can only be a logical out come of such treacherous leadership.

The Ministry of Education wants everybody concerned on the issue to believe that the selection of management bodies in universities like Bahir Dar is transparent and all major decisions are made by successive consultations of those responsible. However, unless academic community in Ethiopian higher education institutions are entrusted to elect their own management bodies, or unless leadership in higher education institution has become open to competitive and experienced Ethiopian intellectuals, it will be difficult to meet university ideals and expect good relation with students and leadership in higher education as it is the case today in Bhair Dar university. The heavy handedness of decision-making, prevalence of bureaucratic bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the university management skill can only be solved by approaching the problem in higher education institutions in the country democratically.

If the ministry of education wants, as it claims, to help higher education institutions to ‘bloom,’ it is important that it should be open to its critics and has to seriously see what is going on in the several institutions under its‘tutelage’ and enter into direct dialogue (create mechanisms for dialogue) with the staff and students of these institutions. It is only then that it can be responsive, supportive and instrument for change.