--By Narayan Prasad Paudel
Higher education in Nepal has drawn massive attention and concern from various communities across the nation. If higher education system of the country is reliable, quality conscious, functional and market and need driven, it ultimately serves the greater need of the aspirant youth of the country in materializing their dreams with upgraded level of skill sets that correspond to the rising market potentiality. Nepali youths are facing many problems due to the substandard quality of education provided by most of the education institutions. The focus of education in Nepal is mass-and money-driven, rather than quality - and outcome - driven. Due to serious limitations and lack of focus on the employability of its products, Nepal’s education system is more or less, except for a few exceptions, unable to create hope and happiness across the larger segment of the Nepali society.
Universities and their focus
As of today, Nepal has nine different universities (TU, KU, Pokhara, Purbanchal, Sanskrit, Buddhist, Agriculture, Mid Western and Far Western ) providing higher education. Among these, the oldest and the biggest is Tribhuvan University (TU), established in 1959 by the government, is providing higher education to more than 450,000 students.
Sanskrit University, established in December 1986, operates from its central office in Dang district. Kathmandu University (KU), established in 1991, is providing higher education to 4,000 students in its own constituent campuses and 7,500 students from its affiliated colleges.
Pokhara University, established in 1997 as Nepal's fifth University, has provided higher education to more than 25,000 students through its affiliated campuses. Purbanchal University established in 1993, operates from its head office in Biratnagar. Along with these two regional universities, Mid Western and Far Western Universities provide higher education in their respective development regions.
Besides them, the Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU) and the Lumbini Buddha University (LBU) are other two universities established in Nepal.
Current Scenario
All these universities claim of having good curriculum structure, academic infrastructure and suitable academic environment. Though most of them claim of contributing their best to higher education in Nepal, in reality the scenario is not exactly the same as stated in their documents.
Curriculum and focus of Faculties
Talking about the structure of academic curriculum of these universities, except in few cases, there are plenty of shortcomings. This includes repetition of the same courses at different level of academic programmes.
Most courses of many of these universities, developed long back, are still in use without timely adjustment to make them, in line with other foreign universities. Most of the courses, are less market - and need driven and more theory oriented that overweight practical courses.
Hotchpotch design of the curriculum that ignore the substance and relevance of the subject matter are some of the apparent weaknesses of the curriculum structure in different Universities in Nepal.
However, few of the academic programmes e.g. Institute of Medicine, Institute of Engineering and few of the MBA programmes in the country have been able to blend all the necessary requirement in their curriculum and hence are able to attract and motivate national as well international students.
Irresponsible academicians are also huge problems in Nepal. For example, some university professors do not entirely contribute time and energy to their own academic institutions as committed by them and as mentioned in their terms of reference (TOR). This trend has resulted in the creation of many helmet professors, unprofessional consultants and development activists, at the cost of academic professional values.
Politics in the Universities
Many academicians forget their own status and keep in frequent touch with political activist and leaders. They think that they would be rewarded by being appointed for attractive academic and non-academic moneymaking and to so called higher ladder positions in different institutions like vice chancellors, registrars, deans, campus chiefs, advisors, ambassador etc. This greed of the academic community has ultimately exploited themselves as they lose their most productive time in unproductive appointments.
We all know that all our universities are ultimately governed by the government. Using the power of governance the Prime Minister (Chancellor) appoints senior leaders of the universities (e.g. Vice Chancellors)on the basis of the prospective candidate’s inclination towards a particular political ideology and the volume of financial contribution that the candidate can make to the political party that the Prime Minister belongs to. Ultimately, the nearer and the dearer of the Prime Minister get appointed to the prestigious position of the vice chancellors. If we examine, the history, except in a few cases, most of the university leaders have attempted to make such appointees happy with exhibiting extra loyalty towards them.
As a result the rest of the leaders of the universities including the registrar, dean, department head, campus chiefs are appointed on the basis of instructions given by political leaders and government authority. They start polluting the institution by hiring faculties on contract by not announcing vacancy through public notice. These rampant contract appointments are made at different layers of the academia on the basis of personal relations and by ignoring the competent public masses that could have been selected, if the selections were made through competitive process. And these are ultimately given permanent position as well.
Consequently prospective and qualified teaching professionals are denied the opportunity to teach while incompetent faculties appointed against the principles of good governance and with sub standard quality, provide sub-standard education and affect entire performance of the university. This practice, rampant and prevalent in every academic institutions and universities in Nepal, has caused continuous loss of confidence on these institutions.
Influence of Student Unions
Irresponsible activities of the student unions in most of the universities have also resulted in the delivery of sub standard quality and performance of academic programmes. In most cases student union leaders force innocent students to participate in their political activities. Based on instructions provided by the union leaders, students forgo their regular learning activities, involve in activities of political parties and lose their productive time and resources. Otherwise, they would have devoted that time to build their learning ability and gained skills expected by their prospective employers and thereby build basis to lead their dream life.
The way forward
Neither political leaders nor government institutions are responsible, nor the academic communities, teachers and students at large, are honestly eager to maintain and upgrade the integrity of the national academia. We are losing our face in the international academic community. Substandard outcome of these programmes has ultimately resulted into greater un-employability, which has led to anxiety, frustration, and depression among the youth and forced them to migrate abroad for employment in menial jobs.
What would be the panacea for the aforesaid problems? The ultimate answer is commitment, dedication, and greater focus on responsibility and accountability, from all stakeholders. This would ultimately refine prevailing degrading professional practices rampant in our education system. We all need to improve ourselves, firstly be removing unwanted greed for money and power and secondly by uplifting our professional competencies and qualities through lifelong learning. Faculties need to focus on training, exposure activities, research and publications that would positively contribute to the overall performance of entire community. Society should play greater role to correct the unwanted behaviour of concerned authorities through constant review of an institution’s performance and activities. Government should build highest level of integrity and morale. Government leaders should be free from the unnecessary greed for power and resources.
The crux of the problem is our political system, which needs to be overhauled. All political leaders need to frame their role model behaviour and should attempt to exhibit and practice in real life. They should hesitate to infiltrate pure academic environment with party politics, otherwise they would be entirely held accountable for the degrading academic performance. We can refine the political machinery of the nation, if we all have strong commitment to uplift academic height in line with developed countries. The principle of sacrifice and contribution should be embedded in the performance of both political and academic leaders.
(Narayan Prasad Paudel, Ph.D, is Assistant Professor, Kathmandu University School of Management. Email: narayan@kusom.edu.np.)
