KATHMANDU: Vice-chancellors of various universities in the country have appealed to the Minister for Education, Science, and Technology Devendra Poudel for the minister’s positive intervention to end political infiltration and interference in the academic institutions.
They placed the request for the same in a discussion held in the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology at Singha Durbar on Tuesday.
Vice-chancellor of Tribhuvan University Prof Dr Dharmakanta Banskota and Mid-West University’s vice-chancellor Dr Nanda Bahadur Singh among others briefed Minister Poudel about various sorts of political problems facing the 11 universities.
They said that padlocking, picketing the offices of vice-chancellors, and protest programs were going on in some universities due to political influence. Such activities, they bemoaned, had affected teaching-learning activities.
Indiscipline on the part of teachers and university staffs organizations and unions with association to various political parties had also caused uneasiness for the vice-chancellors to perform and deliver.
Urging for legal and other intervention to help resolve such issues prevailing the universities, the vice-chancellors also discussed the works to be done in the higher education sector.
Dr Banskota of Tribhuvan University, the country’s oldest and biggest university, shared that staffers and unions backed by political parties tend to press them to work in their interest. “Politics is dominant in every faculty and campus.
Academic and administrative works have been facing problems due to meddling of unions,” he said.
Similarly, Prof Dr Yadav Prakash Lamichhane of Nepal Sanskrit University appealed to the Minister to help address the issues relating to 1,365 bighas land owned by Nepal Sanskrit University in Dang district.
The University, according to Prof Lamichhane, has not been able to utilize the land since the land was seized by Maoists during insurgency and it is currently being used by third parties. He requested with the Minister to address the issue forming a high-level commission.
Minister Poudel assured the vice-chancellors of the positive intervention of the government in the problems facing the universities. He viewed that the universities’ leadership should have the capacity to convince the political leadership to reform the universities crippled by the politics of various politically-backed unions and employees’ associations.
Poudel also called for reform in higher education within the parameter of the existing laws and acts. He vowed that the Ministry would also facilitate in easing off disruption and disturbances plaguing the universities.
According to him, the government would resolve the issues relating to occupancy of the universities land by the landless squatters with due respect to the landless squatters.
Pledging that the government would do the needful to resolve this issue besetting the universities by forming a high-level commission, he viewed that teachers should be recruited on the basis of their merit rather than under pressure.
He urged the vice-chancellors to move ahead with a proper action plan to reform higher education.
Minister Poudel had unveiled his 31-point educational reform plans on November 23 which included making university education scientific and research-oriented.
(Prakash Silwal/RSS)
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