Reality of technical education in Nepal

  Reality of technical education in Nepal

We are living in a technological age. The development of technology directly reflects the development of country so the technical education of the country reflects its development.

 The history of technical education is ancient but the modern technical education begin since 1200 with the establishment of Oxford and Cambridge University. Moreover, from 1900 onward, due to the rapid technological revolution it has become the vital aspect of the human civilization. Since the world without technology is unimaginable, so technical education plays a pivotal role to fulfill the need of modern era and to improve living standard of human being. Its development was given top priority since 1900 due to which we got to see the technological revolution. It is now impacting every phase of human life. The need of technical education for the development of socio-economic and other field must be obvious to all of us.

Nepal has no longer history of technical education. Beginning of modern technical education was traced in 1927 when “Nepal weaving wheel committee” was initiated by Tulsi Meher. This committee provided education and training to the masses of citizen mainly disadvantaged women. Later in 1931, another technical school was opened to provide basic skills in weaving, threading and cutting. An engineering department was also started in the same school in 1941. Later in 1959, it was reorganized with the capacity to produce 60 civil engineering overseer per year. The institute of engineering (IOE) we call today is the outcome of same technical school, which is now running under Tribhuwan University.

Being from an engineering field, I am here going to be more concerned with the technical education that is being provided in the engineering colleges of Nepal. The education system of most of the engineering institute is based on the theoretical approach, which is no longer relevant to meet the need and development of today’s society. At the same time, most of the engineering institute are not equipped in term of infrastructure and faculty and their quality has been suffering.

Now the revolution is needed in the education system, mainly of the technical institute of Nepal. The present education system is doing nothing other than creating bewilderment and distraction to the student. The student are learning about the machines and their application looking at the images of the page and description of the sentences.

How the student can imagine about the sophisticated use and control of machine from those pictures and wordy description? Question needs to be raised. A faster transformation must take place from the present theoretical & certificate based education system to the knowledge & research based education.

The need for updating the curriculum at the regular interval must be acknowledged by the universities since rapid change in technology is taking place. We still are wasting our time and energy learning about the technology and methods that are either obsolete or invalid. The software and technology in our present curriculum are based on old system, which are no longer efficient. Due to recent development, a large number of such software and technology are available which can reduce our effort and time to gain the required outcome. In addition, the need of the recent market cannot be achieved through our outdated curriculum, which is causing the graduate students to face hardship for being employed or start their own business.

The present education system of Nepal is good at creating certificate holders but not productive human resources that our country needs. The certificate does not guarantee knowledge and ability of the person to fulfill the need of present society since it is based on theoretical exam to the larger extent. Though the syllabus seems to cover few practical topic, it is not in real, as it seems. Most of the teacher skips these practical works due to lack of interest & infrastructure and focus their effort on content subject matter. Their avoidance mentality leads to the complete or partial lack of knowledge to the student in the related field. The few practical topic mentioned in the present curriculum are outdated which are no longer helpful to deal with the recent problems or jobs.

Not only the curriculum and teacher are problem but also due to increase in number of certificate chaser, universities and colleges are raising up like mushroom without proper faculty and infrastructure. The technical colleges have become a good business source rather than the educational institute. Now there is a need of making some solid and serious decision to uplift the education system of these institutes. First, the focus must be given to the practical based education system rather than present theoretical based education. For this, few changes are essential not only from the universities but also from the government bodies. There must be a collaboration between these two bodies to uplift the education system so that the country can felt some good development work.

 There are many rural villages in our country where electricity has become a dream for the villagers. The tangled and unmanaged cables on the utility poles of various city are making such place aesthetically poor. Traffic Jam of Kathmandu is really a serious problem that needs to be addressed soon. The country is facing significant financial loss on importing various electronic products and so on. The country is facing lot of similar scattered and unmanaged development work that needs lot of human resources. At the same time, the technical students need some interaction with the work of their related field before they start their own carrier.

Who, being an electrical engineering student, don’t want to help in building mini/micro hydropower in those villages? Who, being a civil engineering student don’t want to help to build flyover to eradicate traffic Jam of their capital? Who, being a geomatics engineering student, don’t want to convert shanty and unmanaged city into a smart city? They can not only help their country but also get a nice opportunity to face the technology of the real field instead of figure-based study. This internship opportunity to the students can make them more capable and help them to gain practical knowledge too.

Also, the unnecessary examination should be removed and learning for the sole purpose of passing should be discouraged and must be substituted with practical and knowledge based education. The study must be based on site rather than classroom; it must be based on group rather than individual. In simple word, a student from an electrical field must get the opportunity to learn about (say for e.g.) hydropower in a real hydropower rather than sitting in the classroom. The gathering of information sitting in the classroom can do nothing other than creating burden and confusion to the students. Every topic must be based on project work, practical and site based. The provision of internship in the various private and the government companies related to the respective field can be a good addition to the site based education system.

If no proper steps are taken in time, the entire education system of Nepal will be futile and sure to collapse in the immediate future and the country is sure to face serious disaster.