Valley
Economic Survey data erroneous, says TU
Tribhuvan University officials have raised questions over the authenticity of the data on the student number presented in the Economic Survey published on Thursday.Binod Ghimire
The survey mentions that the number of students in the country’s largest university increased 62 percent to 604,437 in the fiscal year 2012-13 from 373,846 in the fiscal 2011-12. TU officials say the figure is higher by around 100,000 than the actual number of students. According to Registrar Chandra Mani Poudel, the actual number of students in TU is around 505,000.
The Survey cites the University Grants Commission as the source of information. However, Damodar Lal Shrestha, chief of the Department of Planning and Monitoring, said the UCG has not forwarded any such figures to the Finance Ministry. “There has not been 62 percent enrolment increase in TU,” he said.
The survey shows the number of students grew by 115,289 in affiliated colleges and by 101,141 in TU constituent colleges.
Poudel attributed the rise to the thousands of new enrolments made by student unions in order to have more voters in the Free Students’ Union election. The TU cancelled the election after it was established that three major unions invested millions of rupees to enroll students only to swell their vote bank.
This is not the first time the Economic Survey data were found erroneous. The report last year showed that the total number of school students was more than half the country’s total population. It said the number of students from grades 1 to 12 was 15.33 million—almost double the actual number of 7.27 million. According to the latest census figures, the total population of Nepal is 26.46 million.