Bidur Prasad Upadhyay

Since 1980 the government and international donors have given higher education a relatively low priority.

The world economy is changing as knowledge supplants physical capital as the source of present wealth. As knowledge becomes more important so does higher education. Particularly in Nepal, the quality of knowledge generated and its availability to the wider economy are becoming critical to nati onal needs. However, the potential of higher education is being realised only marginally. This poses challenges as higher education has been competing with new realities such as expansion, differentiation and the knowledge revolution for the past several decades. As more and more children complete primary and secondary education, many wish to gain a degree. Expansion is not only creating chaos but also has caused the average quality of education to decline as resources are stretched too far. Since 1980 the government and international donors have given higher education a relatively low priority. Narrow and misleading economic analysis has contributed to the view that public investment in universities and colleges brings meagre reforms compared to investment in primary and secondary schools and that higher education magnifies income inequality. Because of this there is a strong feeling among policy makers in Nepal that quality improvement and enrolment expansion in higher education will have to be achieved with little or no increase in public expenditure.

As a result, higher education in Nepal is under strain. They are chronically under-funded, but face escalating demand. Faculty is underqualified, lacks motivation, and poorly rewarded. Students are poorly taught and curricula underdeveloped. Universities lack the necessary funds to provide basic educational infrastructure, laboratories, computers, etc. Nepal, as a whole, lacks sufficient resources to provide adequate support to faculty. Institutions of higher education need to clarify the national benefit, as over 90 per cent of the knowledge produced is not produced where its use is required. The challenge is how to get knowledge that may have been produced anywhere in the country to the place where its can be used effectively. This requires the creation of a cadre of knowledge workers who are expert at configuring knowledge relevant to a wide range of contexts. The shift from knowledge production to knowledge configuration is a challenge that is acute for the developing countries like Nepal.

There are many difficulties in achieving the aims of higher education. Action, therefore, will need creativity and persistence. A new vision is what higher education requires combined with better planning and high standard of management. The strength of all players, public and private, must be used with the institutional community. This diversification will bring new providers into the system, especially from the private sector and encourage new types of institution to emerge. In order to operate efficiently, higher education institutions need to be reduced in size, and they will have to learn to make use of intellectual resources that they don’t fully control. This is the only way they will be able to interact effectively with the distributed knowledge production system and with the progressive differentiation of supply of and demand for specialised knowledge. The universities will also have to develop structures, which promote and reward group creativity.

The predominant pattern of higher education in Nepal is principally benefiting the most affluent. Experiences demonstrate that breaking this pattern is essential, and also that the difficulty of doing so should not be underestimated. In a county with a fragile system of governance, there will be grievance if subsidies and privileges are reduced for the poor, which can be a threat to political stability. So, the government tread warily in introducing reforms that affect the most powerful and those with the potential to destabilise regimes.

But it is obvious that high quality human capital is developed under high quality education systems, with tertiary education providing the advanced skills that command a premium in today’s workplace. In this connection, the knowledge, skills and resourcefulness of people are increasingly critical. Even in the US, it is reported that human capital is three times more important than physical capital. Planning education is a systematic management activity to guide long-term development, assess risk and seek alternative ways to ensure long-term viability and improve quality.

For this UGC should be strengthened as an independent higher education commission with greater power so that it could function efficiently to project enrolments, financial requirements, advise external aid and lending agencies on investment needs, register and accredit institutions, sanction new programmes, coordinate admission for degree granting institutions, and prepare a strategy for reforming the financing and management of higher education. Besides, higher education system need to find a way of reconciling the dual qualities of excellence and equity. Programmes to increase equity will prove unsustainable if they are seen to undermine the standards of excellence on which high education is based. Hence merit criteria cannot be relaxed but a long-term solution requires public investment at all levels of the education, in order that a large number of well-prepared candidates from disadvantaged grou-ps can compete for access to higher education.

Prof Upadhyay is chairman, UGC