Although the quality of education in the country’s oldest varsity, Tribhuvan University, is degrading every year, per student investment has almost doubled over the last five years.

A report presented by the Registrar’s Office at TU Senate shows that the highest increase in expenditure has been in Medicine followed by Agriculture and Animal Sciences (AAS) and the lowest increment is in the Education faculty. According to Registrar Chandra Mani Poudel, the increase in lecturers’ salary, cost of stationery items, lab equipment and chemicals has led to considerable rise in the per student investment.

The report shows that the per student investment for a medical student has more than doubled from Rs 253,697 in the fiscal year 2006/07 to Rs 586,500 per annum in 2011/12, while the investment in AAS has climbed from Rs 1221,142 in 2006/07 to Rs 202,800 in the current fiscal year. Similarly, the investment in Engineering has increased by some 80 percent in five years from Rs 55,000 per year to Rs 95,000. “There has been a huge increment in lecturers’ salary, and stationery and lab items in the past five years but student number is decreasing. This has led to huge increment in expenditure,” said Poudel. The per student annual expenditure in Forestry Science has increased to Rs 161,281 from Rs 104,960 in five years, while investment in the Science faculty has climbed to Rs 35,364 during the same period.

The report also shows that the TU, which invested Rs 4,674 to each of its management students in year 2006/07, has been spending Rs 7,012 at present, while its investment for students in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences has soared by more than Rs 5,000. The per capita investment in Humanities is around Rs 14,000 each year at present. Similarly, the investment in the Faculty of Law, which was Rs 30,213 in 2006/07 now, has increased to Rs 45,319 per annum.

According to Poudel, some 200,000 students are pursuing their higher education from 60 TU constituent colleges across the country under four faculties and five technical institutes. Just 15 percent of the total expenditure in the TU is managed by its internal sources and the remaining is provided by the government.

source: The Kathmandu,24 June 2012