Tribhuvan University (TU) of Nepal holds a hat-trick of recognition in terms of its reputation: the first, the oldest and the largest.

The university could also have been entitled with ‘the best’ but the standard required to be ‘the best’ is way too high. The issue of ‘the best’ is relevant herein because ‘the system’ (as they say) is smoldering the university from becoming the best and one of the fumes is its ‘examination system’.

Generally, an examination system includes two basic elements: taking exam and publishing exam’s result. This authority has been designated to the Office of the Controller

of Examination (OCE) by TU. The OCE is responsible for regulating examination system of all Bachelors and Masters’ degree programs under the affiliation of TU.

However, the responsibility has not been accomplished up to the mark. The exam form of an academic year is not published unless the results of the previous academic year is out, which too is not published on time; the exam routine is published late.

So to speak, TU is violating its own prescribed rule and the victims are the students. Who shall be accountable for this: the university, the OCE or the system?

Where competition is prevailing in every sector these days encouraging to serve better, the university is opposite its worth degrading its quality every academic year.

This is the foremost reason why the semester system has not been implemented in all the programs of TU despite the formulation of its decree.

Implementation of semester system in TU is just like counting one’s chickens before they are hatched.

The university in several occasions blames ‘the system’ for its slackness. But who, or what, is the system? Isn’t it the thing that is regulated by the university and its members? But the reality is that TU is not regulating its system, the system is regulating TU per se and this is where the Pandora’s Box rests.

The tasks of the system are so tangled in between each other that none of them are executed routinely. Where an institution’s system doesn’t work according to its rule, the institution is a mess.

If only the university has been able to bind its system as per its rule, it would worth to be entitled ‘the best’.

Not only the examination system, from physical infrastructures it possesses to the quality of education it delivers, there is a list of grey areas where TU has been lagging behind.