Crackdown on foreign-affiliated colleges flouting rules

In a new crackdown on poor quality degrees, the Nepal government is strictly regulating colleges affiliated with foreign universities to offer overseas bachelor and masters degrees in Nepal, following the findings of two expert panels that most do not abide by existing rules and fail to offer quality education.

A proliferation of foreign-affiliated colleges over the years has led to as many as 28,073 students enrolled in 59 colleges during the ongoing academic year – around 5% of all university students in Nepal.

Following complaints against the colleges from students and academics, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology formed two different committees this year to study the management and performance of colleges offering overseas degrees.

Both panels, one led by former government secretary Shankar Koirala and the other by Dr Binil Aryal, dean of the Institute of Science and Technology at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, revealed that most lacked quality and were flouting the rules.

They recommended that the government strictly enforce the rule that only colleges affiliated to foreign universities listed among the top 1,000 either in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking or the Shanghai Jiao Tong World University Ranking, and having Quality Assurance and Accreditation (QAA) certification, should be allowed to operate in the country.

“We have made recommendations to ensure our children get quality education. Only those colleges that are affiliated with reputed universities can offer better education,” Aryal told University World News.

The Aryal-led committee’s report found several breaches of the directives, including a significant number of the colleges lacking quality teachers, having poor infrastructure and not having been subject to proper evaluation, normally carried out by the education ministry.

As many as 59 colleges in Nepal offer bachelor and master’s programmes affiliated with 36 universities from eight countries. Only 13 are affiliated with universities in the top 1,000 of the world rankings.

Among the total, 11 colleges offer programmes affiliated with the Malaysia-based Lincoln University College, which has the largest number of affiliations, followed by the University of Sunderland in the United Kingdom, with five affiliations. Neither university currently ranks within the top 1,000.

The directive to regulate foreign-affiliated colleges, enacted in 2002 and revised twice since then, includes mandatory provisions that the host universities offering degrees must be among the top 1,000 universities and have received quality certification.

Both study committees found that some colleges have been running specific programmes with affiliations from two different universities at the same time. They recommended that the ministry direct the colleges, within a certain time frame, to affiliate with the world’s top 1,000 and quality assurance-certified universities.

“My team is under discussion as to how many years the colleges should be given to get affiliated with the top 1,000 ranked universities. We might allocate a couple of years,” Baikuntha Aryal, chief secretary at the ministry, told University World News.

“We will also suggest necessary amendments in the directives to include stringent measures to regulate such colleges,” he said.

The ministry has already started implementing the recommendations, which could include amending the directive, by forming a seven-member committee led by Aryal.

As a first step, the committee asked all foreign-affiliated colleges to start the process of QAA certification from Nepal’s University Grants Commission, to separate the programmes affiliated with different universities, and appoint dedicated principals to oversee them.

Minister of Education Bidhya Bhattarai said that she was fully committed to implementing the recommendations from the expert panels and that the ministry could scrap the permits of defiant colleges.

Colleges claim bias

However, managers of foreign-affiliated colleges said they were not convinced of the impartiality of the panels, claiming the expert reports are biassed because dominant members of the panels are professors from state-run Tribhuvan University, which they regard as their competitor.

“Both the committees lacked our representation. Now, the education ministry is moving ahead with amending the directives without consulting us. We object to the moves,” said Laxman KC, executive chairperson of the Presidential Graduate School, who also leads the International Education Providers Association, Nepal, an umbrella body of foreign-affiliated colleges.

The association has challenged the government’s decision in the Supreme Court. The case remains sub judice.

KC said the government's unilateral move undermined the contribution of such colleges in providing foreign degrees at an affordable fee within the country, keeping students from flying abroad.

Over the years, Nepali students have left the country in hordes – more than 100,000 students leave the country annually for higher studies. “The number would have been even higher if our colleges had not retained hundreds of students,” said KC.

Expert panel members said that it is illogical to demand that these colleges remain unregulated just because students do not have to go abroad.

“Barring a few, most of the colleges are far from providing quality education. Most of the affiliated universities are not perceived as good even in their home countries,” stated a member of the Aryal-led committee, speaking to University World News on condition of anonymity.

“These colleges are operating arbitrarily as their owners have been influencing government authorities all these years,” he said, pointing out that the government had left them to operate unbridled.

Other recommended measures

To improve the quality of education facilities and conditions, the expert committees also suggested the UGC keep a record of all students at foreign-affiliated colleges and determine student quotas for each programme based on an evaluation of colleges’ physical and educational infrastructure.

Currently, there is no limit to student enrolment for any programme. For instance, one of the colleges has 1,559 students for a three-year BSc Computing programme.

They also suggested constituting an expert panel to screen colleges that seek permission to operate with foreign affiliations in the future.

Ensuring full scholarships to 10% of the students as prescribed in the existing directive was another suggestion.

“We have allotted two months to all the colleges to provide every detail about student enrolment in each programme, including a list of students who received scholarships, details of their teachers and infrastructure, among others,” said chief secretary Aryal. “We will deal separately with each of the colleges after receiving their reports,” he stated.