Abstract:
The purpose of the study was to investigate the practices and challenges of educational
project development in higher education institutions of eastern Ethiopia. To address this
objective, three basic research questions were posed: What is the current status of project
development in Higher Education Institutions of Eastern Ethiopia? What are the
challenges to educational project development in the study area? How educational project
development will be improved? Descriptive survey research design and mixed research
approach were used. Both primary and secondary data were gathered. Simple random
sampling (to select universities), availability and purposive (to select respondents)
sampling techniques were used. The sample size was 266 participants from three
Universities. Data were collected through questionnaire, interview and reviewing
documents. The data were tabulated then quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed by use
of descriptive statistical measures such as frequency, percentage and mean. Regarding
the findings, staffs’ attitude towards project development was found high, the extent of the
initiation of staffs to spend their time on developing project besides their regular duty was
found fairly high and the extent of the roles educational leaders played for the proper
project development was found low. Finally, the analysis of data indicated inability of
achieving significant improvement of staff’s project development due to the influence of
information barriers, lack of proper training and motivation, lack of leadership skills and
qualities and lack of budget. These problems reduced the quality of educational project
development in the higher institutions. Therefore, the problems need proper and timely
intervention. So, the MoE, University leaders and NGOs should work hard to enhance the
participation of staff by the use of training, providing sufficient information, good
coordination and experience sharing. The MoE, all Higher institution leaders and
managers and other stakeholders must work together to increase the participation of staff
on educational project development. Universities, government and NGOs should allocate
sufficient budget
