After three years of groundwork, the Tribhuvan University (TU) has decided to launch four-year bachelor's degree programme in science, law and education faculties from the new academic year beginning September.

The university in 2010 had decided to upgrade its three-year programme to four years to meet the international standard. As most of the countries are running four-year bachelor's programmes, students graduating from Nepal have been facing problems while pursuing higher studies abroad due to lack of enough credit hours.

According to Keshab Kumar Shrestha, chief of Curriculum Development Centre at TU, curriculum for the four years programme has already been developed and will be applied from the new academic session. “The programme will be applied in non-technical faculties such as science, law and education in the first phase from new session after the final decision from respective dean offices,” he said. The final decision that had to be made by May has been delayed, as the posts of dean are lying vacant in all faculties. TU, however, is reluctant to upgrade the course for Humanities as the number of students is significantly decreasing in the faculty every year.

TU in July 2010 had expedited groundwork forming a high-level committee led by Shrestha for the feasibility study. The committee concluded that the launching of the new programme was possible as the human resources and the infrastructure used by the phased-out Proficiency Certificate Level could be utilised for it.

Following the report, the university's academic board in the same year had given a green signal to develop syllabus for the programme forming a separate curriculum development committee for each subject. Presently, more than five dozen subjects under five non-technical faculties are taught at the university.

Under the new syllabi, classes will run on semester basis and examination and result publication will be directly controlled by Dean Offices from the respective faculties. Shrestha said that both three-years and four-years programme will go together for a couple of years. The TU had upgraded the two-year bachelor's programme to three years in 1992.

source: The Kathmandu Post,13 June 2012