Restructuring Nepali Universities

Most scientific discoveries, inventions, and sociocultural theories, which contribute to the overall development of a nation, are the products of universities. The university indeed produces creative and critical thinkers who can generate constructive ideas for development. Many countries have developed with the best minds of university wits. Universities are thus significant institutions in a country, whether developed or developing, in the contemporary world. But not all universities can contribute to the nation equally well because their objectives, types, and management systems are many and various. While the universities in developed nations are advanced, those in developing ones are less so. 

Although there might be debates about what makes a university advanced, at least one indicator distinguishes between them. The standard of a university can be measured by the extent of its impact on society as a whole. Over the years, some university-ranking agencies like Academic Rankings of World University, QS World University Rankings, and Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings, among others, have developed some criteria to measure the standard of universities. With variations in the categories and methods of ranking agencies, the most common categories to capture the university's performance are academic reputation and research output. 

Nepal’s varsities 

THE, for instance, has fixed such indicators as teaching, research, citations, international outlook, and industry income to measure the rankings. Due to these variations, the same university can be ranked in one position by one agency while in another status by another agency. Yet, the range of variation in ranking is not alarmingly high. Tribhuvan University, the oldest and biggest in Nepal and one of the largest in terms of the number of students and the number of programmes it covers, has been enlisted in the ranking process for half a decade. Despite hardships, the fact that it has been ranked in the range of 800-1000 on and off among around 1500 universities is a matter of great pride.

After TU, with its manageable size, Kathmandu University (KU) has also earned a high reputation in the international arena. The other universities across different regions are also struggling to improve their academic reputations. After the establishment of the federal republic, even the provinces are opening new universities to cater to what they call the needs of the people within the province. 

However, the concept of running multiple universities in a small country like ours is not as reasonable as some non-university people might think. The pressing issue is that simply opening a new university in a particular place does not suffice; rather more difficult task is to smoothly operate to produce the human power that can be significant for individual and national development. 

Considering the academic achievements of our new universities in relation to the cost we bear, it is indeed not worth spending. One of the chief reasons we have not been able to achieve what we expected to achieve is that we have opened universities without defining the nation's needs. Many of them are opened by community leaders, mostly politicians, who have no clear idea of what a university is and do not know how it can be operated. This is partly due to their desire to earn credit for opening them without bothering much about how they can sustain them. Another reason for the ineffective operation of new universities is that they tend to follow the same structure and method of Tribhuvan University. They like to open as many programmes as in TU without adequate resources.

Indeed, the leaders of new universities probably do not think that a university at a regional level cannot be as comprehensive as the one that opened sixty years back with adequate state resources. The next common problem of Nepali universities is structural management. Discussions on the need for an integrated law to govern all universities have appeared and disappeared several times. The time now has thus come to retrospect the management of multiple universities in our country. Can we regulate them all under one umbrella Act, as is often argued? 

Looking at the nature of ill management of some universities, especially those as large as TU and those which have not even developed the infrastructures, we cannot be assured that the umbrella Act alone cannot rectify the worsened situation. In addition, the fact that promising students do not like to study even at the undergraduate level is the greatest challenge to Nepali universities. Whereas the number of universities is growing, the student population has not grown accordingly. It is not surprising to understand that meritorious students want to go abroad for better higher education. If Nepali students have no faith in Nepali universities, what use are the new universities?

Remedies to ills

However, managing Nepali universities is not as incorrigible as is often discussed in the non-academic market. There can be some remedies to heal the ills of university management. First, we need to restructure all universities by assessing the nation's needs and defining a definite purpose. We can do it with sufficient discussions among the experts and stakeholders. Second, we can develop them as thematic universities that focus on a particular field of study to cater to certain students' needs. At present, there are no such universities except an agriculture university in Chitwan and a forestry university in Hetauda. It is difficult, if not impossible, to run all programmes in all universities equally effectively.

Third, we can change the structures of all national universities by making an umbrella Act in the federal parliament and all provincial universities by making corresponding laws in Provincial Assemblies, which only can manage the universities under the single Act better than now. Lastly, we should internationalise university education by joining hands with reputed universities in collaboration from around the world, which can minimise the fleeing of thousands of students abroad. If Nepali students are assured they can get an education as good at home as they expect to find in foreign universities, our universities can certainly be greener.  

(The author is the chairman of Molung Foundation. bhupadhamala@gmail.com)