Higher Education in Nepal

This book presents a showcase of discussions and critical perspectives about Nepalese higher education. Its chapters cover topics such as the impacts of local sociopolitical changes and global forces on public and private education, emerging online and distance education, administrative and intellectual leadership, quality assessment, graduate employability, global mobility of students, and the contributions of global diaspora of Nepalese scholars. The central questions of the book are: What are some of the local and global academic interactions in Nepalese higher education and what are the current challenges and pathways for advancements and improvements? How can Nepalese higher education absorb twenty-first century values of quality education as external forces, while adapting new developments to local needs? How can scholars interested in Nepalese, South Asian, and international higher education create opportunities for scholarship and professional collaboration around research on higher education in this region of South Asia? What issues and perspectives can research and scholarship about Nepal's higher education offer to international discourse in higher education? The book offers information and resources to international educators interested in the dynamics of Nepalese and, by implication, South Asian higher education by introducing key challenges in policy and programs, innovative changes in curricula, effective approaches in technology application, and strategies for future integration of global reforms in education.

Krishna Bista is Associate Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership and Policy at Morgan State University, Maryland. His research focuses on college student experiences related to classroom participation, faculty-student relationships, and cross-cultural teachings, and learning strategies in higher education. Dr Bista is the founding editor of the Journal of International Students, a quarterly publication on international education. Rosalind Latiner Raby is a senior lecturer in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies department at the Michael E. Eisner College of Education at California State University, Northridge. She is also the director of a non-profit consortia, California Colleges for International Education that serves the California community colleges. Dr Raby is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education. Shyam Sharma is Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Writing at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr Sharma is the editor of the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Perspectives in Higher Education. In addition to having published in a variety of venues about writing in the academic disciplines, cross-cultural rhetoric, and new media in higher education, he contributes a regular column for the Republica about higher education in Nepal.

List of contributor Acknowledgments Foreword (Sabnam Koirala-Nawaj) Section I: Introduction 1. Telling Stories, Generating Perspectives: Local-Global Dynamics in Nepalese Higher education. (Krishna Bista, Shyam Sharma, Rosalind L. Raby) Section II: Socio-economic Contexts and Issues 2. Higher Education and Economic Development in Nepal. (Amrit Thapa and Ujjwala Maharjan) 3. Progress and Lags in Educational Attainment in Nepal. (Shyam Thapa) 4. Understanding Policies, Priorities, and Roles: Higher Education in Nepal at Crossroad. (Suresh Gautam, Prakash C. Bhattarai, and Tanka Nath Sharma) 5. Class, Gender, Ethnicity, and Higher Education Choice in Nepal. (Damodar Khanal) 6. Faculty and student experience of earthquakes in Nepal: Crisis management recommendation in Nepalese higher education. (Rajendra Joshi & Herbert Fynewever) Section III: Globalization and Global Issues 7. Brain Drain and Higher Education in Nepal. (Bhesh Raj Mainali) 8. Diaspora and Capacity Building in Higher Education in Nepal: An Entrepreneurial Perspectives. (Dinesh Gajurel and Basu Sharma) 9. Nepalese Recruiting Agents for Overseas Higher Education: Issues and Challenges. (Krishna Bista) 10. Higher Education: Bhutanese Refugees in Nepal. (Monica L. Lakhwani) Section IV: Important Trends and Changes 11. Making the Shifts to Change the System: Implementing Semester System through Pedagogical Training in Tribhuvan University. (Sudha Tripathi, Shyam Sharma and Surendra Subedi) 12. Decentralized and Autonomous Higher Education in Nepal: How Nepalese Higher Education Derived These Names and Legitimacy. (Nitya Nanda Timsina) 13. Open University of Nepal Initiative: Lessons Learned from Designing an Institution of Higher Learning. (Pramod Dhakal, Drona Rasali, Ambika Adhikari, and Raju Adhikari) Section V: Disciplinary and Social Perspectives 14. Nepal's Journalism Education in Tertiary Level and the Role of Diaspora Scholars. (Bhanubhakta Acharya) 15. A Situated Discourse: How Writing is Defined and Taught in Higher Education in Nepal. (Santosh Khadka) 16. Community Colleges and Youth Mobilization: Assessing the 21st Century Workforce Development in Nepal. (Krishna Bista and Uttam Gaulee) Section VI: Paths Forward 17. Redesigning Higher Education in Nepal. (Shyam Sharma) 18. Privatizing Higher Education of Nepal: Problems and Possibilities. (Bala Raju Nikku) 19. Promising innovations in Teacher Professional Development through the Application of ICTs and Open and Distance Learning. (Ellen Carm) Section VII: Conclusion20. Complexities of Higher Education in Nepal (Rosalind L. Raby, Shyam Sharma, Krishna Bista) Index