The Center for Population Studies (CPS) was initially established as the Demographic Training and Research Center (DTRC) in 1982 to satisfy the country’s human resource needs in areas of demographic data collection and analysis. The Center was established with the financial and technical support from the United Nations Population Fund to create a self-sustaining program as a permanent feature of the Addis Ababa University’s academic program. The major objectives of the Center were: formulating and carrying out research in the areas of population and development interrelationships; providing relevant training at graduate, undergraduate and in-service levels; and offering advisory services to Government and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs).
Since its establishment, the Center, as the only institution of its kind in the country, has been providing training at various levels (in-service training to middle level government experts at federal and regional levels, undergraduate service courses to students in other departments of the University and postgraduate training leading to the M.Sc. degree and conducting research. The first batch of graduate students was admitted in 1986 and since then over 280 population experts with the Master of Science Degree had been trained and graduated.
At the beginning, the focus of the graduate training program was on formal demography; that is, demographic analysis, which is confined to the study of components of population structure and change. However in 1991, the graduate curriculum was revised to give a balance between formal demography and population and development linkages. The 1991 revised curriculum was more multidisciplinary. A consultative meeting of stakeholder was conducted in the late 1990s and based on their suggestions and taking the post-ICPD issues into account, a second revision of the graduate curriculum was made in 2004. This lately revised MSc program has three areas of sub-specialization: Technical Demography, Population and Development, as well as Reproductive Health. Having taken general courses during the first Semester of the first year, students then take courses in their sub-specialization areas during the rest of the program. After completing course work, a student is required to write a thesis on an approved topic of his/her choice.