Education is perhaps the single essential measure to ensure sustainablerneconomic development, democratic participation and peace building. Higherrneducation specifically has a great potential in the country's over allrndevelopment since it is the level at which candidates gain society basedrnknowledge and develop skills and attitudes to shape the comingrngeneration. However, gender inequality has been among the majorrnoverwhelmingly prevailing problems at tertiary education. In cognizant ofrnthis prevalent gender gap, the Ethiopian government education policyrn(1994) affirmed the commitment of the government to establish anrneducation s y s tem that facilitates and encourages the equal participation ofrnboth boys and girls. Thus, to this end, the Ministry of Education put thernaffirmative action policy, which allows girls to be admitted in higherrneducation institutions with a lower GPA by 0 .2 than their male counterrnparts. Besides, higher education institutions are mandated to designrnaffirmative action strategies with in the framework of the policy tornameliorate campus based impediments.rnTherefore, the purpose of this study was to see the effectiveness of thernprogram at Jimma University- Education faculty .. Accordingly, descriptivernsurvey method was used. To collect reliable data, questionnaire, interviewrnand document p.nalysis were employed as instruments., Various sets ofrnquestions were prepared for 190 female students and 70 ins tructors. Twornexperts from gender office were also participated in the research byrnproviding information through interview. The result revealed that though anrnimprovement has been under way the program was not effective asrnintended. Primarily, female students didn't get sufficient orientationrnregarding the importance of the program. In addition, the numbers ofrnfemale students and f emale instructors who have been supposed to be rolernmodels were few. Moreo ver, the attitude of female students towards thernprogram and themselves negatively affected the success of the program.rnOther academic and non-academic problems such as poor academicrnp erformance at lower levels, economic cons traints and socia cultural factorsrnexacerbate the situation at the faculty and became beyond the capacity ofrnthe program. As a result, female students' participation at the facultyrnremained below the males.rnFinally, the study suggested that to promote gender equity in education, arnconcerted effort should be made by all stakeholders at the faculty inrncollaboration with other support providers .