Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has of late been rooting for a cause that should have been taken up long ago—that of changing the provision of having the country’s prime minister as the ex-officio chancellor of universities. On Tuesday, Dahal, while speaking at the Kantipur Education Summit in Kathmandu, said the government had started the process of appointing academics and experts as chancellors of the country’s universities. Dahal also said an integrated higher education bill would address the legal concerns related to this prospective change.

Nepal’s higher education institutions have for long been crippled by political power games. Not only does the prime minister hold a vital position in the universities, the appointment of their top leaders is also a matter of pure political calculus. In the past decade and a half, when different coalition governments have come to power, the appointments have been made through bhag-banda, in line with the proportional representation of parties in parliament or government. This has led to the entry of incompetent individuals in top university positions and created mistrust among people, especially students, about the quality of the education on offer.

Having recently donned the academic regalia in convocations of several universities, Prime Minister Dahal must have guessed the mood among the students and faculty in the universities. With over 100,000 Nepali students expected to have gone abroad for education in the academic year 2021-22, the universities are struggling to fill student seats and pay their faculty and staff. Facing an existential crisis, the universities are knocking on the door of the government, pressing for a substantial intervention to ensure students stay in Nepal for higher education. Moreover, there has been no shortage of calls for the depoliticisation of universities as a first step for their very survival. It is in this context that the prime minister has been batting for a restructuring of the chancellor’s role and depoliticisation of the selection process of vice-chancellors among other top university leaders.

The translation of his speech into action, though, is going to be tough, as there is no dearth of parties with vested interests. The vice-chancellor, for instance, is not just a singular appointment. A vice-chancellor with the right ideology or party can make the careers of a slew of faculty and staff in the university. So the first disapproval might come from the universities themselves, which have for long been heavily politicised. Next, political parties have turned the universities into spaces to park their cadres, and they wouldn’t want to see a non-political academician lead these institutions. It is only by fighting such obstructions in and outside university spaces that the prime minister can help bring about the changes he is professing.

Reportedly, instead of the prime minister, there is a proposal for the appointment of the education minister as the ex-officio chancellor, which does not make any sense. Why not ensure that rather than a career politician, a proper academic or administrator gets the position at all times? Done right, this one change alone could greatly improve the quality of our institutions of higher education. Done wrong, and our already beleaguered universities could sink deeper into the morass of mismanagement and politicisation. 

(This article was first published by The Kathmandu Post, Nepal).