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Reluctant privatization: assessing the higher education context and policy formation in Nepal

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Abstract

The higher education system in Nepal has witnessed major achievements and challenges in the past few decades. This paper takes stock of the way the system has evolved and is now mismanaged, with a particular attention to the overall structure, financial management, quality control, and human resources that are central to fulfilling its societal promise. Given that these challenges have been a by-product of an evolving process of policy formation drawing from both global forces and local contexts, this analysis explains how the country has arrived at the current policy of “reluctant privatization” using path dependence and Advocacy Coalition Framework. Whereas the Government of Nepal is at a crossroads in reforming higher education, the insights from this analysis help students, researchers, and policymakers better understand the stakes involved and the potential fault lines that have occurred in its evolving historical context.

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Notes

  1. This is based on the chronology of years in which universities were established by using various university websites and news sources. Bhatta (2015) also provides an overview of these historical developments in Nepal.

  2. A probe conducted by the National Vigilante Centre, for example, showed 12 medical colleges throughout the country overcharged students by nearly NRS. 3 billion between 2015 and 2018 (Shrestha, 2019).

  3. News media regularly report the misuse of authority in granting affiliations or authorizations. In a recent case, for example, a legal action was sought against the vice chancellor of TU and other 42 officials for “awarding affiliations to medical institutes that had breached the criteria set by the government, universities, and the Nepal Medical Council” (Sapkota, 2018).

  4. Whereas the enrollment increased by 50 percent between 2008 and 2015, the public investment in higher education essentially stagnated at less than one-third of one percent of GDP on an annual basis, with the actual higher education budget relative to the overall national budget declining much further from the historical level of around 1.5 percent (UGC, 2016).

  5. There were no assistant professors reported for Tribhuvan University.

  6. Neither the Higher Secondary Education Act of 2046 (1989) nor the more recent Act Relating to Compulsory and Free Education of 2075 (2018) explicitly deals with higher education.

  7. In simple terms, path dependence suggests that outcomes determined by such rationally justified random process as equal probability (like selecting a ball) can lead to uneven concentration of chances when the returns are put back into the equation. Hence, future outcomes always follow some predetermined path (Arthur, 1994).

  8. Using the QWERTY keyboard as an example that is now universally embraced, David (1985) argued that today’s choice just followed what happened to the development of keyboards historically.

  9. Whereas Tribhuvan University was founded in 1959 by bringing all of the otherwise independent colleges under one umbrella, the early 1980s marked the period in which colleges operating especially with community (nonprofit) resources were also granted an affiliation to instruct (Nepal Education Commission, 1992).

  10. Seven of the 12 degree-granting universities currently in operation have adopted the affiliation model with the rest having single constituent colleges and only one having four constituent colleges (Ra & Joshi, 2018; UGC, 2016; Upadhyay, 2018).

  11. While higher education has not received much attention in the traditional supports provided by the World Bank and other development partners, some support has targeted this sector as well. The loan assistance of US$65 million announced in 2015 and US$60 million announced in 2021 are two examples where higher education has received exclusive focus (World Bank, 2015, 2021).

  12. The government expenditures on higher education, for example, remained one percent of the gross domestic product during the eight years ending in 2014/2015 even when the overall national budget increased from 21 percent of the gross domestic product in 2006/2007 to 31 percent in 2014/2015 (UGC, 2016).

  13. Moreover, as Rappleye and Un (2018) document using the cases of Cambodia and Bangladesh, the World Bank has failed to understand the specific local contexts while attempting to reform higher education using the dominant global model and expectations.

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    Udaya Wagle

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Wagle, U. Reluctant privatization: assessing the higher education context and policy formation in Nepal. Educ Res Policy Prac 21, 339–355 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10671-021-09308-7

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