Public Youth Campus

From the Desk of Editorial Committee

PYC Nepal Journal of Management, Vol. XI, No. 1, 2018:

From the Desk of Editorial Committee

The 2018 issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of the PYC Journal of Management is at your hand. We, at the outset, express our sincere gratitude to the contributors, the campus administration, fellow faculty members and students alike for the support extended to us for bringing out this issue.

This year (September 2017 – August 2018) has been special one for we Nepalese as a long cherished political stability (with two-third majority of a single party) has been achieved. This achievement, with big excitement, propelled another expectation – the longstanding problems of higher education be sorted out soon. The problems in higher education are multidimensional but can be stereotyped as academic and non-academic. Here we would like to draw attention to a few non-academic issues which are simple but have been made complex. The reason for choosing non-academic problems is not because academic issues are less important, but because redressing such non-academic problems proactively is simpler to address, bring instant outcome involves no or least cost, and most importantly they create an enabling environment for addressing academic problems properly. The list of non-academic issues is long, but here we just touch upon only one aspect – (academic) governance in Nepal’s higher education in general and Tribhuvan University in particular.

Higher education institutions have their own statutes for their governance. The statute provisions student representation in different echelons of governance ranging from campus management committee to senate of the university. But all seats are lying vacant because the election of the student union, which is supposed to take place every alternate year, has not taken in most of the campuses for last 10 years. It has not only barred the students’ formal representation, but it has created serious problems to heads of institutions – be it a campus or executive council of the university. They are tired of negotiating with different student wings representing different political parties. Our expectation is simple – there should be formal representation of students in governance structure, with timely election of the student union, so that their voice is heard in the decision-making process; and undue pressures of informal groups are avoided.

The statute also has a formal process and mechanism for the recruitment of the staff and faculties, and appointment of institution heads in the university. But we have bitter experience: part-time faculty members have outnumbered fulltime professors in TU campuses; and acting chiefs in campuses, acting deans in faculties and institutions for months (years sometimes). Moreover, key post sat universities and even the University Grant Grants Commission remain vacant for months. The result is– many academic leaders (e. g., dean or vice-chancellor) are ‘made’ academic leaders by appointing them in the ‘chair’ of academic leaders. We do not know the benefit of keeping these posts vacant and ‘making academic leaders’, but for sure they cost a lot to the institution and the education system. Our expectation is simple –appoint appropriate persons in vacant posts in time. The vision of prosperous Nepal cannot materialize through costly wide roads crowded with unruly traffic. The bedrock for a prosperous Nepal is the education system that can be revamped with costless administrative reforms. Let us stop this collaborative venture of not doing good things to prevent sure failure of the university system. Grandiloquent speeches do not remove ailments in our education system; even small, meaningful reforms do.

Finally, we are pleased to inform you all, particularly the students, that we have published Student Supplement to this issue. Its purpose is to publish articles that are useful to enhance research skill of our students. Further, we have also initiated the process for registering the Journal with Nepal Journals Online (NepJOL) which will give us a mileage on the quality and international readership of our Journal online. We hope that the publication of the Journal and Student Supplement to the Journal will contribute to enhance research skills of researchers.

 

As always, we humbly request readers for critical comments and valuable suggestions for the improvement of the Journal in the days to come.

 
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