With the new fiscal year officially beginning Sunday, Project Implementation Unit (PIU) -- which was formed as per a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) recently signed by WB, TU and UGC -- will come into operation. PIU, which functions under TU, has been entrusted with making five TU constituent campuses autonomous entities by 2014. [break]
WB has provided around US$15 million to be spent during a six-year-long project, which began in July of 2007, for institutional reforms in community campuses. A significant portion of the fund has been allocated for transforming TU constituent campuses into autonomous entities.
UGC has succeeded in making only one TU constituent campus--Mahendra Ratna Campus in Ilam district -- an autonomous entity so far, three years after the project kicked off.
UGC´s failure in transforming TU constituent campuses into autonomous bodies was caused largely by the distrust prevalent among TU professors and employees over the government´s autonomy policy.
"They (TU professors and employees) supposed that once their campuses were announced autonomous, they would have no support whatsoever from the government," Bhim Raj Adhikari, TU registrar, said. "Therefore, they did not cooperate."
The concept of transforming TU constituent campuses into autonomous bodies is meant to gradually develop those campuses, where thousands of students study, into separate universities.
In some campuses like Kathmandu´s Tri Chandra, Pokhara´s Prithvi Narayan and Biratnagar´s Mahendra Morang Campus, more than 10,000 students study. By contrast, some universities have less than 5,000 students.
"These large campuses can be developed as universities once they become autonomous," Hridaya Ratna Bajracharya, technical advisor to TU, told myrepublica.com.
Low disbursement
By the end of fiscal year 2009/10, the third year of its Second Higher Education Project (SHEP), introduced for institutional reforms of community campuses, UGC has allotted $10 million, just 63.3 percent of the total fund provided by WB. However, UGC officials have termed it ´satisfactory´ progress.
"In the first two years of SHEP, the percentage of disbursement was very low," said Binod Kumar Shrestha, member secretary of UGC. "But, we distributed more in the last fiscal year compared to past."
UGC has disbursed funds to 57 campuses so far. Of them, while 47 are community campuses and 10 are TU-constituent. "We expect to fund more 40 community campuses next year," Shrestha told myrepublica.com.
In the course of SHEP, not only does UGC fund community campuses but also involves them in the reform process by 2014. UGC provides funds to only those campuses that express commitment to reforms through their performance.
UGC has been gauging campuses´ performances by 14 different indicators. Campus results, enrollment of marginalized students and demand of their graduates in labor markets are some of the indicators.
The better the campuses perform the larges slice of the fund pie they bag. Campuses meeting all requirements can obtain a maximum of Rs 16 million but most of them get just Rs 3 million on an average.
Education experts view the low disbursement of SHEP fund as well as the less campuses getting it as an indicative of poor performance of community campuses.
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