南アジア・インド洋世界研究会

Speaker:
Dr. Pratyoush Onta,
Martin Chautari, Kathmandu, Nepal

Discussants: TBA

Moderator:
Tatsuro Fujikura, Department of South Asia and Indian Ocean Studies, Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University

Date and time: 29th September 2015, 14:00-17:00

Place: Room AA447, 4th Floor, Research Bldg No.2, Yoshida Main Campus

Contact: Tatsuro Fujikrua email: fujikuraATasafas.kyoto-u.ac.jp

Abstract:
For about 30 years, higher education reform agendas in Nepal have revolved around two main themes. The first of them is the idea of ‘rightsizing’ of the country’s oldest university, Tribhuvan University (TU, est. 1959), by severing parts of its constituting colleges to form the seed infrastructure of so-called ‘regional’ universities. The second is the execution of the multiple university idea whereby eight new universities have been opened under various pretexts and several more are said to be in the pipeline. As of now, both of these reform agendas have not really succeeded. To the contrary, this paper suggests that their execution pathways have had debilitating consequences for Nepal’s public universities and the entire higher education system. As a result, all of the new public universities have thus far failed to grow as vibrant institutions and Nepal’s higher education landscape is still overwhelmingly dominated by TU (both in terms of size and character), an institution many insiders consider to be almost beyond reform. This paper identifies the interplay between local interests and national confusion as being at the crux of the failure of universities in contemporary Nepal. The analysis presented in this paper also suggests that when it comes to the subject of building universities in post-Panchayat Nepal, the main political parties and their counterparts in civil society have not demonstrated much commitment to plural imaginations for the Nepali university landscape.