How to cite this document?

Bista, K., Sharma, S., & Raby, R. L. (2019). Telling stories, generating perspectives: Local-global dynamics in
Nepalese higher education. In K. Bista, S. Sharma, & R. L. Raby (eds.) Higher Education in Nepal (pp. 3-21).
New York, NY: Routledge.

1 Telling stories, generating

perspectives
Local–global dynamics in
Nepalese higher education
Krishna Bista, Shyam Sharma, and
Rosalind Latiner Raby

Abstract
In this chapter, we explore the tension between the changes in Nepalese higher
education prompted by macro-level political and economic shifts on the one
hand and, on the other hand, the tendency of other cultural, political, and socio-
economic reasons to stagnate structural change in education. From the autocratic
Rana regime (1846–1951) to the ultra-nationalist Panchayat system led by the
Shah dynasty (1960–1990), the civil war prompted by Maoist insurgents (1996–
2006) and then to the liberalization and globalization of the economy by the
democratic revolution that led to the eventual rewriting of the country’s consti-
tution as a federal democracy (2015), major shifts in political and socioeconomic
structures have led to broad policy changes in education, as well as new kinds of
institutions, curricula, and teaching learning culture to some extent. The case of
Nepal – with its tension between progressiveness and conservatism, its obstacles
and pathways, and its tendencies to embrace and reject global influences – also
helps to illustrate for scholars of higher education in Nepal and beyond the impor-
tance of visionary leadership, of restructuring curriculum (especially by involving
teacher-led innovation and autonomy), of enforcing and improving faculty devel-
opment models (with a focus on knowledge production, continued development,
reward system aligned with productivity and not just years of service), and for the
elimination of political influence and interference in higher education.

Introduction
In October 2018, as we started drafting this chapter, we were reading a news
item in the Times Higher Education that had created a national buzz in Nepal.
The magazine included Nepal’s oldest and still largest public university, Tribhuvan
University (TU), as one of the top 1,000 universities of the world (THE World
University Rankings, 2018). In fact, for the first time, TU had made a surprising
leap to be included within the 800–1,000 rank (compared to nearly 4,000th, albeit
in other indexes, among 16,000 universities). Incredulous social media conversa-
tions that followed among members of the university reflected tensions between
the desire to celebrate the progress and increasing worries that the university (and

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 4 Krishna Bista et al.
higher education in the country at large) had been stagnating in relation to radi-
cal sociopolitical and economic changes since the establishment of modern higher
education institutions in Nepal in the mid twentieth century. The discomfort also
had to do with the news coming at a time when there were many news stories and
editorials in national dailies about the perceived downfall of Nepali higher educa-
tion in terms of its ability to meet local/national socioeconomic demands.
Delving deeper into the details of the surprising new ranking of this univer-
sity showed that quantity was in its favor: while it had a dismal score of 6.6 in
research and 9.2 in teaching, its international outlook scored a whopping 45.2
and its industry income a 34 on the scale of 100 points on each category. With
a young history (60 years old), and the fact that Tribhuvan University has to
educate 359,377 full-time students in 64 branch campuses across an unevenly
developed mountainous nation, we could argue it should not be running after a
ranking whose criteria may not align with local and national demands on higher
education. As critics argued, the “progress” made by the university was based on
criteria that did not measure the socioeconomic value of Nepalese public sector
higher education locally and nationally.
Of course, as the university’s administrators argued, institutions are brands/
images as well, and they can mobilize their prestige to push themselves forward in
the directions that are more needed for the nation and society (TU rises, 2018).
For example, the score of 35.7 on citation says little about the quality of the
internationally cited Nepalese scholarship, especially if we define quality not just
in terms of theoretical or methodological rigor but also in terms of relevance and
value to the society and professions in Nepal.
However, while the new ranking could impel new generations of academic
scholars and institutional leaders to start building upon the new “prestige”, the
conversations exposed critically important underlying tensions between problems
and prospects in Nepali higher education.

Historical background
The conversations around the new ranking especially raised questions about the
evolution of a culture and system of education that has been shaped by radi-
cal geopolitical forces and changes – local, regional, and global – that, when
unpacked, could offer important perspectives for scholars of higher education.
While quite brief, the history of Nepal’s “modern” education is often dramatic
and fascinating, not only in terms of direct influences of radical internal political
shifts, which allow scholars to productively analyze those influences to gener-
ate theories and perspectives about education (Pandey, 2006), but also in terms
of how global forces have played themselves out in this short history and what
lessons scholars of education elsewhere could draw from the global/local inter-
actions. Parajuli (2012, p. 297) writes, for instance, that “the Rana era educa-
tion policy moved from keeping the masses ‘ignorant’ (by barring their access to
education) to crafting the minds of the masses (by teaching them their ‘duties’).”
But the democratic revolution of the 1990s brought about a tectonic shift in the
other direction, putting neoliberal privatization front and center (Regmi, 2019).

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 5
The “modernization” of education, which many understand as involving
adopting the modes and methods of education from the West or from “inter-
national” standards, is not a straightforward story. Modern, formal education in
Nepal is said to have begun with Durbar High School (“durbar” meaning “pal-
ace”) that was established after a visit to Britain by Prime Minister Jung Bahadur
Rana in 1850 (Sharma, 1990). Since then, “modernization” has been a platform
for ongoing local sociopolitical tensions, as well as being shaped by global forces.
So, for instance, today’s public interest in the English language and medium of
instruction evolved from English being a secret means for the ruling oligarchs to
gain connection with the world outside, to an aspiration for greater social capital
among the upper class and caste to, finally, becoming a rather unrealistic aspira-
tion for the middle class (Sharma, 2018a). Similarly, the view of education as an
economic investment in the individual’s life – which is in tension with its view as a
social investment for social good – has also evolved with the same modernization.
In this brief history of Nepal’s higher education, politics and political economy
remain the most potent shaping forces.

Unpacking the tensions

This book explores the tension between changes in higher education prompted
by macro-level political and economic shifts on the one hand and the tendency
for structural change in education to be stagnated by other cultural, political, and
socioeconomic forces on the other. On the one hand, from the autocratic Rana
regime (1846–1951) to the ultra-nationalist Panchayat system led by the Shah
dynasty (1960–1990), the civil war prompted by Maoist insurgents (1996–2006)
and then to the liberalization (1990s onward) and globalization of the economy
by the democratic revolution that led to eventual rewriting of the country’s con-
stitution as a federal democracy (2015), major shifts in political and socioeco-
nomic structures have led to major policy changes in education, as well as new
kinds of institution, curricula, and teaching learning culture to some extent. On
the other hand, education has not seen similar structural changes or, for that mat-
ter, significant change in culture and expectations, roles and relations, rewards
and motivation for various stakeholders in higher education: higher education
remains characterized by a number of “sticky” issues, such as the use of higher
education institutions as a political battleground, the predominance of lectures as
pedagogy and exams as assessment, a culture of convenience shaping key aspects
of the system (such as teacher hiring and promotion, curriculum, teaching, assess-
ment, student success), lack of flexibility in equivalency and transfer, insufficient
willpower and autonomy to implement a federalized structure in education, loss
of expertise and lack of distribution of talent, the practice of research and publi-
cation in name only (if any) among scholars, and little integration of research in
graduate education (with almost none in undergraduate education).
The chapters of this book collectively unpack two conflicting realities: while
higher education in Nepal has historically been shaped and influenced by struc-
tural shifts in politics and economics, it has largely failed to make proportional
structural changes of its own. By highlighting the ongoing progress in a number

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 6 Krishna Bista et al.
of areas in light of the obstacles to innovation and effectiveness in research and
production of knowledge, in teaching and production of workforce, in enhancing
student learning and experience, and so on, contributing authors foreground a
number of pathways and make recommendations in their respective areas of focus.
Authors present critical perspectives about both practice and policy by assess-
ing a range of issues, including: the emergence of new disciplines and courses;
new demands of the market and society/world; privatization and educational
entrepreneurship; online and distance education; MOUs and transnational col-
laborations/partnerships; mobility of students and scholars (diaspora, returnees,
mobile scholar); changes brought about by technological advancements; social
issues, such as ethnicity, caste, gender, and ability; semester-based education and
other innovations or adoption/adaptation of international standards; graduate
education, professional degrees, and the issue of employability; and knowledge
production and research/scholarship.
Ultimately, the overarching argument of the book is that Nepal’s higher edu-
cation must respond to the dramatic changes that have happened and are hap-
pening in society, not just responding to social changes but also facilitating social
change in meaningful directions. We argue that the case of Nepal – with its ten-
sion between progressiveness and stagnation, its obstacles and pathways, and its
tendencies to embrace and reject global influences – could also help to illustrate,
for scholars of higher education in and beyond Nepal, the importance of vision-
ary leadership, of restructuring the curriculum (especially by involving teacher-
led innovation and autonomy), enforcing and improving faculty development
models (with a focus on knowledge production, continued development, reward
system aligned with productivity not years of service), and eliminating political
influence and interference in higher education.

Politics as policy
An assessment of Nepal’s national education policies over the past century shows
that each major policy change was shaped directly by regime change and political
revolutions. But higher education in this country remains unable to reciprocate
the progress in democratization of the nation state, liberalization of its economy,
and globalization and technological progresses seen across society. The use of
education as a political tool, while failing to reflect and advance political pro-
gress through progressive change in the structure and culture of education, is
a key contradiction that still shapes the development of Nepalese higher educa-
tion since formal “modern” education began in the country with the establish-
ment of the Durbar (“palace”) High School. The autocratic Rana family legacy
of prime ministers that essentially ruled the country for a century (with titular
Shah kings) introduced “Western” education as a move to modernize learning
for their own family members, while preventing the general public from accessing
the new system. In addition, the Rana regime tried to “shelter graduates of the
Durbar School from radical ideas circulating in Indian universities” (Weinberg,
2013, p. 64), preventing the social liberalization that occurred through colonial

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 7
India. Education policy simply constituted the imposing of national politics and
political interest of the ruling class upon schools and colleges.
While continuing the policy of access to modern/international education
for family members, the Shah regime shaped national education policy with its
nationalistic and national development agenda, including seeking to instill patri-
otism and “loyalty to the crown” as an educational objective for the general pub-
lic. Similarly, though the influence of the British empire had continued through
the economic and educational influence of India during and a few decades after
the establishment of Nepalese colleges (the first being Trichandra College in
1918) and universities (the first being Tribhuvan University in 1959), the last
few decades have shown a shift from the regional influence of independent India
to the influence of Britain and then of the United States. Even after the establish-
ment of the new, federal structure of government, new attempts to formulate
policies remain highly politically motivated and controversial, driven as they are
by ideological agenda of the ruling party.
Since the liberalization of the economy brought about by the partial victory
of the democratic revolution in 1990, Nepal’s higher education policy has envi-
sioned increased access for more people. Even though higher education policy is
now written by academic experts, the academic culture and environment where
the policy is implemented through curriculum, teaching, and research continues
to be undermined by political turf wars and interference – which unfortunately
magnify confusion and stagnation, adversely affecting forces of change and adap-
tation to socioeconomic progress.
On the one hand, as a society, Nepal has been a virtual laboratory for research
in a variety of disciplines, such as linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and, more
specifically, issues such as conflict and reconciliation. This is because the soci-
ety offers fascinating social dynamics, as well as their impacts on education, to
academic researchers. Similarly, reflecting the opening of Nepali society to the
outside world through diplomatic relationships, revolutions toward democracy,
and economic liberalization and globalization, Nepal’s higher education has rap-
idly expanded in terms of the numbers of institutions and students (Table 1.1),
as well as disciplines and degree programs. Compared to just a few disciplines in
a single university – Tribhuvan University, which was established in the 1950s –
there are now nine institutions of higher education (after the addition of Kath-
mandu University, Pokhara University, Purbanchal University, Nepal Sanskrit
University, Lumbini Bauddha University, Mid Western University, Far Western
University, Agriculture, and Forestry University) and three autonomous medi-
cal institutions (National Academy of Medical Sciences, B.P. Koirala Institute of
Health Sciences, and Patan Academy of Health Sciences), which have been added
in recent times (University Grants Commission, 2011). The University Grants
Commission (2011) indicated a total of 407,934 students enrolled in Nepal’s
1,087 higher education campuses, which include 83 constituent, 702 private,
and 302 community campuses. Of the total, Tribhuvan University alone consists
of 60 constituent and 1,053 affiliated colleges, which accounts at least 90% of
total enrollments in higher education (Bhatta, 2012; TU, 2018).

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 Table 1.1 Institutions of higher education in Nepal and other demographic informations, 2012/13

Institutions/ Constituent Affiliated Affiliated Total Total Number of Total Student Number of
Establishment Campus Community Private Programs Enrollment Teachers
Campuses Campuses

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Tribhuvan University, 60 422 559 1,041 173 382,927* 13,679*
1959
Kathmandu University, 6 0 15 21 153 12,954 341*
1991
Pokhara University, 4 0 49 53 43 24,380 119
1997
Purbanchal University, 3 5 121 129 76 25,796 61
1993
Nepal Sanskrit 14 2 2 18 9 3,862 770
University, 1986
Lumbini Buddhist 1 0 5 6 5 302 60
University, 2004
Agriculture and Forestry 2 0 0 2 4 140 81
University, 2010
Mid-Western University, 1 0 0 1 27 2,472 100
Far-Western University, 1 0 0 1 21 787 71
2010
B.P. Koirala Institute of 1 0 0 1 10 1,155* 164
Health Sciences, 1993
National Academy of 1 0 0 1 14 115 221
Medical Sciences,
2002
Patan Academy of 1 0 0 1 1 60 114
Health Sciences, 2009
Karnali Academy of 1 0 0 1 - - -
Health Sciences, 2003
Notes: The numbers refer programs and student enrollment include proficiency certificate level courses.
*
University Grants Commission (2013). Education Management Information System: Report on Higher Education, 2011/12, Sanothimi, Bhaktapur, Nepal.
Source: University Grants Commission (2014). Education Management Information System: Report on Higher Education, 2012/13, Sanothimi, Bhaktapur,
Nepal.

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 9
On the other hand, the interesting social contexts/dynamics or the rapid
expansion of higher education has not been supported by commensurate struc-
tural, social, and cultural shifts. The fundamental practices and culture of higher
education have not reflected sociopolitical change from the ground up or in
response to the forces of globalization from the outside. As such, the contradic-
tions that we observe in Nepal’s higher education is a striking case from which
important perspectives could be drawn for academic and policy discussions about
higher education especially in developing countries around the world.

Political paralysis
As discussed above, Nepalese higher education has historically been shaped by
regime change and political shifts. The effects of ongoing political influence on
higher education, which are worth further unpacking, have been paralyzing. In
place of the monopoly of autocratic interests of the past, dominant political par-
ties not only nominate academic leaders but also directly control the chain of
command, severely undermining progress in the professionalization of faculty
and staff. Proposed bills in this regard seek to institutionalize far more political
control of education (Mathema, 2019). Political parties also mobilize “brother”
student organizations that are explicitly partisan, using the facade of student gov-
ernance as training grounds and ladders to political leadership, often letting them
resort to violent tactics of all kinds. Not only do public colleges and universities
have leaders (from vice chancellors to provosts and often deans) who are politi-
cally appointed or apportioned among parties in power, they also exert propor-
tional political power through their respective student organizations.
By turning educational institutions into turfs for political battles, teacher, staff,
and student unions interfere with such fundamental functions of academic insti-
tutions as hiring and promotion of faculty and staff, student enrollment and the
assessment of student work, the teaching and learning environment, professional
growth and the academic integrity of all stakeholders, and, if nothing works, the
basic condition of keeping colleges and universities open for normal operation
through education strikes. While the gradually implemented semester system,
some level of competition provided by private colleges, and the relatively stable
politics in the context of full democratization and federal governance structure
have all begun to reduce the impacts of political battles, political interference and
tensions lurk beneath the surface of even the most positive changes that are tak-
ing place in Nepalese higher education.
Some scholars and academic leaders often express optimism about the increas-
ing respect for academic professionalism and the demands for an academic
environment without political interference. But the corruption of professional
standards and academic integrity, ranging from the influence of student politics
on grading, of teacher politics on tenure and promotion, and of external politics
on policy and the operation of academic institutions by and large remain. The
academic environment today is significantly better when compared to the uncer-
tain times of the political insurgency in the 1990s (Neelakantan, 2004) and the

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 10 Krishna Bista et al.
uncertainties until the mid 2010s, but higher education is yet to make consider-
able progress against political interference and move forward in professionaliza-
tion and autonomy.
In fact, political interference has not only hollowed the institutions from the
inside out, it has also caused or aggravated corrupt behavior by external influenc-
ers. As Mathema (2007) highlighted with regard to grade schools, higher educa-
tion also remains “intensely political” in Nepal. Politics, in fact, undermines or
corrupts the role of international development agencies that seek to intervene in
the education systems like Nepal’s, as well as allowing exploitative agencies to take
advantage of politicized local systems. As Regmi (2017) argues, the World Bank’s
educational policy recommendations are guided by underlying assumptions of
neoliberalism – mainly marketization, privatization, and decentralization – that
ultimately have “almost no potential in addressing Nepal’s development chal-
lenges” (p. 188). That is, external players are able to pursue their self-interest, as
well as abuse systems and processes in the country, because of the lack of robust
missions internally, integrity in the political system, or the safeguards against tak-
ing advantage of the system by external players.

Culture beyond politics

However, it is not just political interference that has kept higher education from
making progress in its own system and culture in ways that could match the
change in political and economic spheres. Politicization is often blamed as the
main roadblock, and it is indeed responsible for an environment where pro-
fessional responsibility and integrity can be more than replaced with political
machinations for achieving professional success, as well as for protection of irre-
sponsibility and corruption. But there are a variety of equally significant road-
blocks, which could be characterized as “cultural” in that they describe patterns
and tendencies that are established over time and are likely to be expected as
normal, rather than problematic, by many.
Fundamental components of the education system, such as curriculum design
and change, teacher autonomy and reward for productivity, assessment practices
and the role of students, and the culture of leadership do not reflect the progress
that has taken place in politics (democratization), economics (liberalization),
and culture (social justice equity) at large. For instance, while the proportion of
female students has rapidly increased, it has stayed stagnant among faculty and
leadership, with decreases happening in some areas such as English Studies.
In fact, even for students from marginalized backgrounds and female students,
the increase in their numbers/proportions has not been matched by qualita-
tive change in terms of the environment and support for them. Kölbel (2013)
reported the greater participation of college students from social groups previ-
ously unrepresented in university education, but she also highlighted the grow-
ing spatial complexity of the educational landscape, where students find difficulty
to negotiate between their conflicting motivations and map out potential future
pathways.

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 11

Socioeconomic roadblocks
In curriculum design and change, the same old practice of trying to impose a top-
down, nationwide curricular framework has persisted, with national curriculum
policy often specifying particular teaching/learning methods, technologies, and
exam-centered and centralized assessment and reporting mechanisms (Martin
Chautari, 2015; Higher Education Policy, 2018; Mainali & Heck, 2017; Dhakal,
Adhikari, & Rasali, 2010). More worrisome, curriculum design and change
remains the domain of a few “national” experts, a reflection of the culture of
social hierarchy that turns an important change-agent such as education into a
conservative and stagnant system. Teachers, on the other hand, believe that there
is nothing they can do about curriculum, having defined curriculum as “pre-
scribed” textbooks to be “covered” within the academic year or term. Indeed, a
culture that views a few experts as exclusive authority on curriculum design, view-
ing the rest of educators are mere foot soldiers to carry out their edicts, continues
to maintain a lack of agency among teachers, as well as a lack of knowledge and
confidence in the fact that much of the “curriculum” constitutes institutional,
departmental, and instructional implementation of guidelines/mandates pro-
vided by experts.
Assessment remains dominated by written exams that are often controlled by
nationalized systems, which often take months to collect, distribute, mark, and
return “papers” for publishing results. Several scholars have argued the draw-
backs of poorly administered national assessments in Nepal and its impact on
higher education, which begins with high entry barriers to college for students
from low socioeconomic backgrounds, public schools, females, and minority eth-
nic groups; the effects of a slow, cumbersome, and unreliable centralized assess-
ment system in higher education are worse in higher education and for students
across the nation (Khaniya, 2007; Kölbel, 2013; Paudyal, 2016).
In some universities, such as the largest and oldest Tribhuvan University, even
after the implementation of the semester system, a centralized examination sys-
tem continues to gather papers from across the country by truckloads at the
“office of the controller of examinations” where assessment inevitably takes a
long time, given the number of staff available in relation to the volume of papers,
and affects all aspects of education. Even where teachers are supposedly given
the authority to assign up to 40% of course credit by independently assessing
student work, teacher autonomy and professionalism in their assessment of stu-
dent work continue to be undermined by the lack of training among teachers to
teach and allocate grades for anything other than exams, the high value assigned
to the external grade by the culture and society, interference by departments or
institutions against teacher autonomy, political or otherwise corrupt influence
of student organizations (or threats from individual students), and often power
dynamics created by misaligned professional rewards among teachers.
In the case of private colleges, which are otherwise known for being free from
external interference and student politics, the use of high marks as an advertis-
ing tool leads to the same undermining of teacher autonomy and educationally

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 12 Krishna Bista et al.
productive use of internal assessment – while external assessment remains a bur-
den against faculty independence and an obstacle against the development of
efficient/timely assessment practices in both public and private sectors (Paudyal,
2016).

Stagnated professionalization
It must be noted that within the half century since its establishment, the modern
system of Nepalese higher education has made enormous progress in a variety of
areas. Although enrollment in higher education in the past has increased dramati-
cally from 254,808 in 2005/06 to 444,994 (75%) in 2011/12, the gross enroll-
ment rate was quite low – 14% in 2010/11 compared to a global GRE of 26%
(Asian Development Bank [ADB], 2015, p. 33). But the professionalization of
higher education needs to be better aligned with the times, especially after major
sociopolitical revolutions that have taken place in recent decades, leading to very
different social demands of a nation with radically different political structures
and socioeconomic conditions.
Higher education in Nepal was born out of a need for the nation to supply
a workforce for the public sector and it grew in response to demands of private
enterprises and the globalization of the Nepalese economy. After federalization,
states have failed to subsume branch campuses of the national public university,
Tribhuvan University, even as they established their own flagship universities; this
failure reflects a social reluctance and political inability to decentralize education.
In addition, because regional universities that were established as public institu-
tions were largely modeled on the national public university in their curriculum
and culture alike, they have been unable to offer innovative ways to address the
economic demands of a new era.
More significantly, private institutions (which have sprung up in large num-
bers in the past two decades and are locally concentrated in a few urban cent-
ers) are mostly “affiliated colleges” instead of being independent systems in
terms of curriculum, assessment, and the model of education. Thus, neither
regional nor local colleges, whether public or private, have developed faculty
recruitment and development models that shift incentives for professional
growth toward producing graduates ready for success in professions and society
(Sharma, 2018b).
As a result, education largely remains an enterprise of preparing for and pass-
ing exams, with private colleges marketing their service by using higher grades
through more regular lectures for their students. As Paudyal (2016) notes,
“student involvement in professional field, engagement in bureaucracy, student
involvement in research work, physical facility and quality human resources are
also not satisfactory” in Nepalese higher education. In fact, in spite of certain
advantages that go beyond higher grades and more regular classes, such as some
attention to professional skills/growth and well-rounded growth of the individ-
ual students at a few private colleges, or ostensible advantages such as the use of
English as the sole medium of instruction, private colleges simply borrow teach-
ers from public institutions for delivering lectures and helping students get good

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 13
grades. Public institutions have paid the least attention to preparing students for
the new economy and social/global realities.

Status of research and knowledge production

Whereas public universities do have professional development models that tech-
nically reward faculty research and publication, private colleges that are accred-
ited by public systems do not even have research/publication as a requirement
for promotion, or any system of promotion for that matter. Nearly all teachers
in private institutions, whose excellence is viewed in terms of the number of
years served or the quality of their lectures, are contingent and also part-time –
including a few published authors, whose prestige as teachers may be reinforced
by their publication.
The idea of research and publication is yet to be resituated and clearly under-
stood as a productive instrument for socioeconomic, technological, and cultural
progress through inquiry and inquiry-based teaching/learning. While most fac-
ulty members in public institutions produce publication whenever they are faced
with the demand for, and often only for the sake of, recruitment and promo-
tion, private institutions do not even demand or reward the scholarly productivity
of their faculty (Sharma, 2018a). Based on a survey of 244 faculty members at
15 institutions, Simkhada, van Teijlingen, Devkota, Pathak, and Sathian (2014)
found that a small portion of senior faculty members (readers/professors) from
certain institutions of higher education indicated publication experience in peer-
reviewed journals, with female faculty members being less likely to publish (32%)
than males (68%).
As Sharma (2018b) has further argued, “[a]n emerging nation needs a robust
culture of research advanced by its higher education. . . [specifically] for expand-
ing knowledge, accelerating economic and social progress, improving the labor
force, and elevating the standard living and quality of life.” Both public and pri-
vate sectors have critically important roles to play and affordance to offer in terms
of professional development models of faculty and the design of curriculum and
areas/priorities of educational experience for students.

Sticky issues
So, what specifically are the socioeconomic, political, and cultural changes that
we are arguing for higher education to revamp itself and to realign itself to those
changes? What particular social changes are most relevant to higher education, and
how should education change in response to them? To answer these questions, we
first unpack the roadblocks of political influence and sociocultural status quo that we
discussed previously as obstructing structural change in higher education in Nepal.

Economic issues
The most significant of the specific obstacles include the urban concentration and
gentrification of education, the financialization and privatization of education

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 14 Krishna Bista et al.
that is putting higher education increasingly out of the reach of most families,
the economic deprivation among the rural majority and the migration of young
people in search of better economic opportunities than higher education prom-
ises within the country, the attraction of top talent by study abroad opportunities
and then by the global market for high skilled workers in economically advanced
countries (not to mention more opportunities and comfortable life upon gradu-
ation), the failure of Nepalese higher education to retain and reward academic
talent with attractive professional development opportunities and a professional
environment, the inability to realize policy objectives for equity and justice of
minority and marginalized groups as faculty and students by academic institu-
tions, and, most importantly, change in social psychology about higher education
from being considered traditionally as a vehicle of personal success and social
advancement to a more mercenary view of it as an economic investment and tool
for economic success.
Prior studies have documented the major challenges that hinder the develop-
ment of Nepalese higher education, including an outmoded teaching and learn-
ing culture (memorization and rote learning, student-centered pedagogy, limited
information access and research skills, assessment system that includes only an
annual written examination), politically controlled academic institutions (politi-
cally appointed head of the universities, political meddling and party-affiliated
student unions on public campuses, ineffective faculty promotion or evaluation
system), and low investment in higher education (ADB, 2015; Bhatta, 2012;
Khaniya, 2007; Horta & Jung, 2014; Simkhada & van Teijlingen, 2010; Trib-
huvan University, 2018) where course redesign, student experience, and innova-
tions in teaching and learning are least focused.
While the new constitution and government policy have provisions for equi-
table access for women, the Dalit community, people with disabilities, and poor
families – and, indeed, the number of some of these groups has increased in
higher education – universities and colleges have not yet substantively changed
the academic culture and priority of support, or created curricular or academic
support for minority and marginalized students and faculty to overcome struc-
tural inequities in higher education that reflect and often reinforce inequalities
and discrimination in society (Carney, 2011; Shields & Rappleye, 2008). Simply
allocating admission and employment quota for certain groups cannot go a long
way in a society that has for a long time suffered systemic social evils such as caste-
based prejudice, marginalization of women, rendering of people with disability
invisible, and exploitation of poor people.

Social justice
Social justice issues need foregrounding in academic programs and practice,
and not just in policy. In a rural majority country, vast numbers of people have
migrated to urban centers, especially because institutions of higher education are
concentrated in the cities. A number of other socioeconomic factors, including
the Maoist insurgency, the globalization and financialization of economy, the

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 15
displacement of people from rural areas and the subsequent ability of those to
seek international labor opportunities to settle in the cities upon return, eco-
nomic aspiration, and the earthquakes of 2015, have all been creating a vicious
cycle of urbanization and gentrification (Pherali, 2011).
But the majority of people, being unable to move to the city, still have no
access to colleges and universities across rural Nepal. They cannot move to the
few cities for going to college or university and, even if they could, cannot afford
the increasingly privatized and increasingly expensive higher education (even in
public institutions). In fact, from the elitist idea that colleges and universities
should necessarily be located in a few urban centers, young people across rural
Nepal (where the majority of the population still resides) aspire to skip the cities
and the colleges in them for pursuing career opportunities in other countries,
whether through education or by dropping out of college.
The disregard of the ground realities for the vast majorities of the country’s
rural population in higher education, as well as its inability to be a driver
of economic change, has left behind the most vulnerable and marginalized
in Nepal – and so has the institutionalized expression of gendered power
or power differences between male and female, leading to the low priority
of girls’ education (Rothchild, 2006). A plethora of research have focused
on similar educational issues in Nepal: a low school attendance rate among
females (Karki & Mix, 2018), the need for discipline-specific teaching materi-
als and training including for students with visual impairments (Lamichhane,
2017); unequal representation of students in higher education – fewer females
in STEM fields (Lie, 2014), high concentration in business and humani-
ties, fewer in vocational and technical fields, the dominance of major ethnic
groups – Brahmin-Chhetri, (Bhatta, Adhikari, Thada, & Rai, 2008) the lim-
ited access to databases and electronic research literature for faculty and stu-
dents (Simkhada et al., 2014).

Migration and mobility

The numbers and trends of Nepalese young people leaving the country, which
involves ignoring rather than aspiring to pursue higher education within the
country, are alarming. Considering the 29 million population in the country
(with a large majority living under the poverty line), a significant portion of
Nepalese youth leaves the country for labor migration or go abroad for higher
studies. For instance, according to UNESCO (2018), there were 49,451 Nepali
students studying overseas (increasing from 24,000 in 2010), and the top des-
tination countries were Australia (14,712), the United States (9,855), India
(9,144), Japan (8,425), Finland (1,196), the United Kingdom (860), New
Zealand (5,94), South Korea (522) and Norway (483). From 2008 to 2017,
more than 3.5 million youths moved to Middle East countries as migrant work-
ers (Baruah & Arjal, 2018). There are new trends of migration to more than
a hundred destinations including European countries. These numbers, among
other things, reflect the failure of education to attract young people, especially

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 16 Krishna Bista et al.
due to its failure to provide them an education that ensures economic success and
upward social mobility.
The fact that globalization and international economic opportunities not only
attract those who have competitive professional skills but also those who must
discontinue education to pursue economic opportunities means that education
has failed to serve the needs of Nepal’s majority poor population by being a lad-
der and bridge out of poverty and deprivation – not to mention higher educa-
tion’s failure to shape economic development and social progress in the villages
across the country where most people still live until they are able to move to the
city or beyond the country.

Focus on research
Higher education in Nepal has not even attempted to substantively pursue
research, teaching/learning, or community engagement with an intentional
focus on local needs or realities, whether it is for the advancement of agriculture
or for infrastructure development, exploitation of local medicinal raw materials or
excavation of metallurgical reserves, development of social policies from within or
understanding of culture and history, or the alignment of educational practice to
local epistemologies or modes of learning in the community. Snellinger (2017)
argued:

the meanings young Nepalis give to their education as they struggle to struc-
ture their lives amid a grim employment environment exacerbated by civil
strife and political upheaval. These young people see themselves as capable
of moving beyond the local sphere of agricultural work and wage labor to
pursue entrepreneurial and professional paths both in Nepal and abroad.
(p. 425)

In this situation, higher education seems to attract fewer young people as a vehi-
cle for social mobility and economic prosperity. And, as such, higher education
is defined as foreign by nature, something to be pursued out there, not only
produced in better places but also about those societies. It is not very surpris-
ing, therefore, that education prompted generations of Nepali young people to
practically and metaphorically leave behind rural life and society, to ignore their
social reality as a subject or object of education. It is as if higher education has
no transaction to make with rural society, its economy or culture, its natural
resources or social institutions.

Rethinking higher education in Nepal

Have significant changes not happened in Nepalese higher education over the
past few decades? Has recent sociopolitical change not been reciprocated by
major improvements in higher education? What about the changes prompted by
the globalization of society and the internationalization of education across the

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 17
world, the adoption of emerging technologies and advancements in new disci-
plines and the development of new courses/curricula?
Of course, partly in response to change and the demands of society, there are
a lot of positive stories to tell about Nepalese higher education, as authors con-
tributing to this book have highlighted in one way or another. For instance, we
can see the emergence of a number of specialized universities (Buddhist, Sanskrit,
Agricultural, etc.), new disciplines (interdisciplinary studies, rural development,
international relations, women studies, leadership studies), and discipline-spe-
cific courses and new or interdisciplinary programs (e.g., tea technology, energy
systems, sustainable development), thesis/research-based graduate programs,
foreign-university affiliated programs, and the like. Many programs (such as busi-
ness management studies, English Studies, etc.) have also shrunk, disappeared, or
adapted/evolved in response to change in society.
What we want to highlight here by way of setting the context for the book
is that there are deeper, more foundational changes that are yet to happen in
Nepalese higher education in order for it to be able to respond considerably
to broad-based social change. Nepalese higher education must make far more
significant innovation and greatly increase effectiveness in research and produc-
tion of knowledge; it must be redesigned to produce a workforce for the new
social and economic realities of a democratic country in a globalized world
(Parajuli et al., 2007; Sharma & Sharma, 2012); it must diversify student learn-
ing by balancing the acquisition of textbook knowledge with transferable skills
and character-building experiences; and it must focus on the rural and poor
majority in order to take them out of vicious cycles of economic stratification
and inequality. For instance, while dramatically increased remittance has finan-
cially improved the lives of a significant segment of society, the remittance-based
economy has not had a significantly positive impact on the pursuit of higher
education for many. Khanal (2018) reported that Nepalese families with remit-
tance income spend more on boys than girls in both rural and urban areas in
Nepal, as well as sending more sons than they send daughters to private schools
(Rothchild, 2006). In her research, Nepal (2014) also found no statistical effect
of international remittances on child education or child labor in Nepal but she
found “a significant increase in non-food expenditures, including education
spending” (p. 838).
Given that even the major changes in political structures, fundamental eco-
nomic realities, and large-scale impacts of globalization have not prompted
considerable structural or cultural shifts in higher education in Nepal, tertiary
education in the country must be rethought in its own national and broad-based
social terms, with a focus on national development and especially social progress,
where higher education is designed with a focus on the majority, the rural, the
poor, and the marginalized. Some scholars have shown that the budget alloca-
tion for higher education in Nepal is relatively low and not enough to improve
the accessibility or quality of higher education (Bista & Gaulee, 2018; Khaniya,
2007; Parajuli et al., 2007; UNESCO, 2018); other scholars have found that the
budget allocation has not been consistent over the years (Baral, 2007); and yet

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 18 Krishna Bista et al.
others have argued that public investment in higher education has not given a
high priority to quality, relevance, inclusiveness, and academic reform (Khaniya,
2007; Carney, 2011; Davies, 2016; Sharma & Sharma, 2012; Upadhyaya, 2015).
But it must also be noted that a significant national priority for the allocation of
public funding for public education (including at the tertiary level) as a social
investment has created opportunities for many people (including from rural
areas) to pursue higher education. Regardless of whether we consider public
investment to be sufficient, however, higher education has evidently not demon-
strated the need for investment in response to structural changes in the economy
and the demands of a radically changed society: it has not created and justified the
demand for national investment in research and knowledge production, innova-
tion and policy-making, training and professionalization of the masses, and social
impact and economic leadership for development. It is with such a broad view
of higher education and its place in society that the chapters of this book seek
to present the case of Nepal. The book seeks to tell the story of a society and its
higher education, with chapters focusing on a variety of significant facets of ter-
tiary education, showing how the fates of the two are intertwined and therefore
must reflect and guide mutual progress.

Conclusion
Nepal has been an intellectual lab for anthropologists, linguists, and research-
ers in the field of education. In spite of being a small country on the world
map, Nepal has ranked as one of the top senders of international students to
Australia, Canada, the United States, Japan, and other destinations for higher
education. The case of higher education in Nepal is striking in historical terms
(for instance, literacy rate has increased from 5% in the 1950s to above 60%
now) and in sociopolitical terms (major political revolutions and the direct
impacts of globalization are transforming higher education toward global
standards). This book addresses several major issues and concerns related to
higher education in Nepal, illustrating the case of Nepal to appeal to research-
ers and scholars studying Nepalese and South Asian higher education around
the world and in Nepal.
Modern Nepalese higher/tertiary education is relatively new, with a legacy
of a century since the establishment of the nation’s first college in 1917 and a
public university system in 1959. The landscape of Nepalese higher education has
been gradually shifting with the rapid increase in the number of private and pub-
lic universities and affiliated colleges across the country in the last two decades.
Nepal is distinctive among low-income South Asian countries in using higher
education institutions to reshape its economy and to counter social stratifica-
tion by promoting high-skilled jobs and post-graduate education at home and
abroad. But as the chapters in this book will highlight in various ways, to align
higher education with the goals of national development and social progress, its
curriculum needs to align with economic demands and social needs, its academic
programs and pedagogical practices with social justice and the advancement of

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 Telling stories, generating perspectives 19
art and culture, and its emerging institutional policies and academic programs
with the increasingly productive development of science and technology. It is not
enough for higher education especially in developing nations to somehow get
into global rankings that may or may not reflect improvements that are meaning-
ful for national development and social progress.
In light of the national and socioeconomic contexts we have highlighted in this
chapter, contributing authors of this book have tried to answer a set of shared
central questions: (1) What are some of the local and global academic interactions
in Nepalese higher education and what are the current challenges and pathways
for advancements and improvements? (2) How can Nepalese higher education
absorb twenty-first century values of quality education while adapting new devel-
opments to local needs? (3) How can scholars interested in Nepalese, South
Asian, and international higher education create opportunities for scholarship
and professional collaboration around research on higher education in this region
of South Asia? and (4) What issues and perspectives can research and scholarship
about Nepal’s higher education offer to international discourse in higher educa-
tion as one of the hot spots of higher education transformations in South Asia?
For the local Nepalese audience (higher education policy experts, institutional
leaders, faculty researchers and instructors, and other stakeholders), we hope that
this book will help develop perspectives, identify issues, inform policy formula-
tion, facilitate program development, explore practices, identify effective prac-
tices, put technology into context and purpose, ask critical questions about open
education/distance education, theorize and guide new development, assess qual-
ity assurance against international/global standards, discuss new developments,
and make them more visible.
For readers in the broader field of higher education discourse, we hope that
this book will serve as a multidimensional case study about recent transforma-
tions, roadblocks, and possibilities as the field of higher education in a particular
country, showing them how education in that country is being shaped by social
changes and revolution, globalization and geopolitical forces, federalization and
decentralization, global and Western influence, and the complex interactions of
the above forces.

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