Dozens of interviews with students, lecturers, and top administrators of Nepal's government-run Tribhuvan University have revealed that Nepal's higher education system is in a tailspin. The teachers are underpaid and untrained, the facilities are deplorable, the students unmotivated, and the administration drifts aimlessly like a ship without a rudder.
His Majesty's Government props up the University, providing 92 percent of its budget. Of this, 80 percent goes into salaries, with administrators outnumbering the teachers. Besides staff and space, most University colleges have nothing else. Academic and cultural societies, clubs, seminars and conferences are virtually non-existent. Laboratories are ill-equipped, libraries are full of mutilated books and sports facilities almost unheard of. Classrooms are overcrowded and students are squeezed into benches and desks that are nothing more than roughly sanded lumber.
Among the students interviewed was Deepak Joshi, 22, an MBA student, who manages to keep up with his course work without attending the overcrowded, unimaginative classes. "I make up for what I miss by consulting the text books," says Joshi. Sakuntala Parajuli, 21, typical of young women from traditional families, is reluctant to commute to the Kirtipur campus because she is forced to travel in an overcrowded, dilapidated bus, pressed amongst sweating bodies of strangers.
Other students, such as Hemanta Rai, 25, are sent to Kathmandu to study by their well-to-do village families once they finish high school. Rai, a political science major, admits he only attends the University because it gives him something to do and, as an out-of-towner, he values campus social life.