FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Higher Education
Commitments To Changed Circumstances

By Dr. Radhaber D. Khati

THE SYSTEM of education is worked-out mainly in accordance with the perspective of the broad national needs for physical and intellectual development of its people. It was not quite long ago, rather until 1959, that common Nepalese people were virtually restricted from getting higher education. More than half a century from the emergence of democracy, now, that our higher education system has become able to cater to about hundred and twenty-five thousand students in various institutions of higher learning managed mainly by a publicly run Tribhuvan University. These students are attending at 61 campuses established and run under this university as constituent campuses. Even though, the figures might look encouraging, there is little to be excited about it, especially, in keeping with the large scale of university attending age population still not getting this opportunity. If the available higher educational opportunities are not going to be inspiring, the quality aspect of it will never be encouraging.

Meet Standards

Various propositions are put forward with an intention to improve the quality of higher education, which has been generally, accepted but not up to the expected level. The recommendations, by the National Education Commission, have suggested that the system of our higher education should strive in meeting the standards of the higher educational institutions, at least, in the countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). It needs still to be seen how much has been achieved in this sector. Therefore, it goes without saying that our system of higher education is hit by two pronged problems, one is quantity, characterised by great enrollment pressure on the disproportionately limited institutional establishments; and another is our system which is hardly able to meet and sustain the quality of educational delivery, at least at par with the standards of the similar institutions of the SAARC countries.

Education system in countries of least developed situation is broadly guided by the manpower needs of the nation. One of the basic commitments of the system of higher education is to produce various levels of able and skilled manpower needed for the development of the country. Besides, there are other missions of higher education which are both knowledge and culture based. They are supposed to both enhance national culture and promote social norms and values. We have felt the need as to how far we have been able to realize these goals, even if they seem to be somewhat traditional at this stage, when education systems, everywhere, are facing the challenge of preparing individuals for rapidly changing society. Since, we need to be still more sincere and regular in evaluating our educational performance against the expected goals, it is high time, now, that we do something very effective with an aim to provide the feedback necessary to our educational planners and the decision makers. Together with this we must also be aware of the emerging social demands from education.
The inclusion of the modern gadgets into our education system and the vision with our educational leaders to predict the rising demands for suitable manpower in the often shifting job markets inside the country and outside, go a long way to affect our educational policies and programmes. Our education system needs to be so efficient that our products should not find any problems in grabbing opportunities in the modern job markets. The reality is that the majority of the products of our system are either forced to line up to enter the narrowing job opportunities, for example, of school teachers or accept the lower level vacancies posted by the government or semi-government organisations, or even take a tough option of being unemployed. Therefore, it is imperative to, put our sincere efforts to develop a system of education, particularly higher education, that really opens up the gate of opportunities.

We do not want our educational products to cripple and not able to tackle the challenges of the day. Our products are expected to put their caliber and skill not only for the sake of their nation building, but also for the service of the larger world extended outside us. They are further expected to meet the challenges that would come in another thirty or forty years of time or even more than that, for which they are hardly equipped now. It is here that our educational leaders and the planners need to have a foresight and strategies worked out accordingly. Therefore, the system has to be made so competent that we could suitably impart our students with the knowledge, that would be needed for them to meet national demands, as well as with the ability to encounter the challenges that are there in front of them nationally as well as internationally.

Until recently, we have been working hard to educate our students with an aim to enable them to successfully accomplish the jobs given to them in relation to their educational background and expertise. That way we are assuming that we are moving forward in fulfilling the responsibilities by meeting our educational goals, or for that matter, goals of higher education. Thus, we have been struggling very hard to somehow maintain a balance between manpower need and the supply if it, within the country itself. But, now, there is a growing surplus in the supply side indicating that our products and the demands of the market do not match; which, in another way, would mean that the unemployment ratio among the products is increasing.

It seems that no nation of the developing category is educating and training its students strictly for the domestic manpower requirement, which is what the mission of our higher education has been. They are doing so particularly with a close eye on the emerging trends of international job markets. Having experienced an acute shortage of technical manpower, many huge employers of the developed world are sending messages and their men to the developing countries to seek the needed manpower for the vacancies that they have now or those to be created in the near future. At this stage, neither we can let our educational delivery system be closed from the outside world, nor can we afford to confine our educational products, as experts, strictly within our own national boundaries. Our higher education system had never encountered such a grave challenge in the past as it is facing now.

Today, doors are suddenly open for the outside world. The developed world is looking towards the developing nations of Asia for the supply of the able and highly trained manpower for their manpower needs. Greater economic booms in those countries have placed huge manpower demands on them, which, in turn, have posed challenges to the Asian countries, the home of more than half the world population and the great repository of the world manpower.

Therefore, this is right time for us to see our educational missions and goals get revised to appropriately accommodate the present realities facing the nation and the world around us. At this age of globalisation and interdependence, we cannot afford to be isolated from what happens in the World. So, let us work to the direction to let our educational products be the experts in successfully tackling the responsibilities that are posed before them nationally, regionally and also internationally, for now and also for the future.

Collaboration

With the speedy change of time and the ever shifting priorities of education, we need to be more cautiously effortful, now, than ever, to bring about modifications and changes in various aspects of our educational endeavors. The call of the hour is to keep pace with time. To this end, we might want to share experience and expertise with the international educational institutions which have claimed much fame on these matters. Let us extend our hands of friendship and collaboration to reach to those across the borders and the continents for externalising education and take greater benefits from it.

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