Mukti Rijal

Tribhuvan University has been stuck in a fix due to dilemma over the appointment of vice chancellor.Though the panel headed by education minister has shortlisted and suggested three potential candidates for VC to the prime minister to pick one of them to head the tuniversity, the name is yet to be finalised and announced. Almost three months have elapsed since the exit of the outgoing VC Tirtha Khaniya but the authorities seem not cognizant of the urgency for filling the void arisen due to the absence of the chief administrator for the university.
The premier seat of higher education has faced a series of challenges and constraints due to inordinate delays in appointing officials or wrong decisions taken to hurt the interests of the university. Retrospectively speaking, though the university has hit nearly six decade since its establishment during the early sixties, the academic quality and environment does not match with its chronological maturity. In fact, the more the university comes of age the more it declines in terms of academic growth and development. Even today the university has been the seat of higher education that does monopolise over the higher education scenario and landscape in Nepal for several decades. With scores of constituent campuses and affiliated institutions spreading across the country, this government funded university towers over others in terms of the size of the students, faculties and infrastructural facilities.
With TU included, the country at present has eleven universities. Almost all of them have been plagued with a host of academic and administrative problems and malaises. They are often times made to operate without the executive officials and officers to give leadership to run their academic activities and routine administrative functions. The independent intelligentsia, some bona fide university teachers and academic staff time and again plead for appointing officials in the varsities based on objective academic criteria and the effective leadership competence.
There are indeed practices and precedents from developing and developed nations where university officials are selected only on the basis of academic credentials and credibility. The competence based selection and appointment of the vice chancellors, rectors and registrar can help restore the rapidly waning credibility and image of the universities where pursuit of competitive, appropriate and relevant knowledge should be encouraged and promoted. However, such pleas have been more or less ignored and drowned out in the cacophony of political noises that clamour and lobby for partisan based selections and appointments. It had come as a natural reaction on the prevailing situation of our universities in Nepal when the University Grants Commission (UGC) itself was reported to be reluctant to release the grants in aid allocated by the government to the universities because of the absence of the high level officials who could lead, plan and decide on the key and critical issues, and also utilise the resources and grants in aid transferred to the institutions. This has further derogated the credibility of the academic institutions.
A long embedded tendencies prevail among the parties to claim and usurp the top level positions for their own party loyalists. This often comes on the way arriving at efficient compromise and understanding among the parties in recruiting the officials for leading and administering the higher seats of learning, educational research and innovation. Several cases and examples can be cited in regard to sheer politicisation of educational institution where political party functionaries are preferred to academicians and educationists specialising in the relevant disciplines and subjects.
At a time when the country needs the educational institutions and seats of learning specialising in and promoting technical trades and vocational education that generate jobs and employment, the parties and policy planners are oblivious of this need. The leaders deliberately neglect, and seem not sensitive enough to appoint officials and administrators to provide strategic vision to the universities so that they could contribute towards fulfilling the national needs.
The bickering over what and which party loyalists should be accorded preference to man the universities of the national importance should not be allowed to come on the way of running the vital and important educational institutions of the country. Educational institutions are overly and destructively politicised, and even the schools operating in the remote areas of the country face interference and meddling of the political groups. The academic activities and their relevance in the educational institutions have been relegated to the background. The educational institutions and forums have been degenerated into arena of political tussles. Even the politically motivated conflicts have been allowed to result into gang fights and violent brawls in the premises of the educational institutions. This fully indicates that the political parties tended to use these academic forum and campus institutions to fulfil their political ends and nefarious interests.
Nepal needs a competitive and healthy environment for imparting education that is best suited to cater to the contemporary requirements and needs of the nation. The mindless politicisation of educational institution especially to fulfil one’s own political ends should be stopped. The academic institutions should be left and allowed to run as space for academic engagements and innovations so that the entire nation benefits and the available resource are better utilised. This time the government should demonstrate that it can eschew the political meddling and rise above the partisan interests for appointing independent and credible person to the post of the TU vice chancellor to bring the country's deteriorating academic situation to order.

(Rijal, PhD, contributes regularly to TRN and writes on contemporary political, economic and governance issues. He can be reached at rijalmukti@gmail.com)