Since its establishment in 1971, the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology in South Korea has been contributing to the Korean economy, by transferring technology from lab to industries. To make the institute competitive with world class universities—such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford in the US—the Korean government recruited its first non-Korean university president, Nobel laureate Prof. Robert B. Laughlin, from Stanford University

in 2004. Two years later, he was replaced by a MIT professor, Nam Pyo Suh. During his tenure, until 2013, Pyu Suh strengthened the institution further by following the policies of his predecessor. He implemented a competitive tuition system, in which the students with poor performance paid more tuition fees. As a result, the government and private funding increased, along with the recruitment of young faculties. The institution’s position in the world university ranking too shot up from 198th to 51st to second best university in Asia in 2014.

Not so far from us, India recently recruited five eminent scientists from Cambridge University in the UK, and California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and New York University in the US, as part of the Jawaharlal Nehru Science Fellowship, a programme designed to help enrich the research culture in the country.

Nepal, on the other hand, is plunged into political turmoil. And like other sectors, academia, including universities and National Academy of Science and Technology has been paralysed. Appointments to the top posts are based on political affiliations rather than merit and are not transparent. As a result, chancellors and pro-chancellors do not often feel obliged to work for the sake of the institutions.

Not for politics

Nepal’s academic institutions, especially Tribhuvan University, require sweeping reforms. Comparatively, Kathmandu University provides better quality education, but is out of reach for most Nepalis. To make a world class university, vice-chancellors of all universities should not be the puppets of political parties. If professors, Wolfgang A. Herrmann and Nam Pyo Suh, can do it, why cannot Prof. Hira Bahadur Maharjan? The government should hire candidates like Herrmann and Suh to reshape the country’s universities. Many senior-level university officers are accused of being corrupt and if these allegations are true, the government should oust them immediately and search for better alternatives. Irrespective of the heads of the universities, however, there are several ways the country’s universities can be turned into world-class institutions.

Universities should not be the place for politics. Groups of students, teachers or staff should be banned from being affiliated to political parties. Since TU receives a large share of funding from the government, it never had to feel threatened by other universities. The government should establish at least 10 government-supported regional universities to promote healthy competition. These universities could be regional constituent campuses of TU merged together or existing universities restructured. These new universities should not be fully dependent on the government and should raise funds for education and research from variety of sources. But they should not be run like profit-making private companies. Each university should aim to empower itself by launching major disciplines of its own.

Money into research

The government should allocate more funding to support research and education in all universities. The ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology should work together to reform the academia. Funding agencies should be directed by capable persons with vision, without any political interference and nepotism. A PhD degree should be the minimum qualification required to enter the university as a tenure-track teaching/research faculty. However, the university can hire teaching only faculties with Bachelor’s degree. In the past, Nepal did not have much PhD level human resources, but these days there are more than enough potential candidates spread across the world. If favourable environment is made, most of them are happy to serve the country.  

The faculties hiring process should be fast. The application process should be made easier such as by introducing online application, so that any interested potential candidate can apply from anywhere in the world. The selection process should also be scientific.

Tenure and promotion should be based on teaching effectiveness, research achievement, publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals that are recognised nationally and internationally, service to the department/university, and on student and external tenure-committee evaluations. Active learning should be emphasised in classrooms. Libraries and research labs should be fully equipped and resourceful. Salary and benefits should be adjusted based on living costs, ranking, and should be increa-sed based on performance. The faculties with exceptional ability should be promoted and awarded while the incapable fired.

Dare, dear

Networking with foreign universities to exchange students, faculties, and for collaboration should be established. The universities should increase the personal development opportunities for students, faculties and staffs. The departments should be given full authority to extend new interdisciplinary programme beyond the existing programmme or courses. All existing universities should make a very detailed, elaborate, integrated website so that all departments, constituent campuses are interconnected with the university’s main webpage.

Vice Chancellors and their teams should dare to reform all universities so that the universities produce world-class competent and creative human resources rather than unemployable graduates. The Nepali government should have a vision to attract eminent scientists and scholars to run Nepal’s academic institution. I doubt this will happen soon because of the way the government and the vice-chancellors are working. But if the government can invest in education and research with good governance, we too can create world-class universities in the days to come.

Neupane works at the Environmental Science Division of the Oak Ridge National Lab, Tennessee, the US ([email protected])