





Degrees in Nepal doesn't guarantee a job. People with undergraduate and even graduate degrees are moving abroad every day. You fly abroad to find jobs, you aren’t getting a job that matches your degree. Even if you end up in a well off countries like US or Australia or somewhere in Europe, your qualification does not make you competent for a job that falls under your degree. A BBA graduate from Tribhuvan University cannot compete with a BBA graduate from an Australian University. Now if you decide to stay in Nepal and fight for a job that you deserve, good luck! Unless you are an engineering or MBBS graduate, there are very few opportunities for you both in public and private sectors. And those few opportunities are most of the time occupied by someone who comes from a well known, wealthy family who has better ‘connection’ than you. I think ‘source force’ is the word we use. So what now? You’ve spend several years working very hard to achieve your certificate, your ego won’t let you go under your degree level and work at a place that you’re overqualified for either. At this point your degree is worthless, nothing more than a piece of paper you can hang somewhere in your living room. And it’s not your fault, it’s the education system we have in Nepal that is set up to disappoint you and fail you. You still hear people sometimes say that we have one of the best school system in Nepal, they’re delusional. Truth is we have one of the worst education system in the entire world.





I only went to boarding school in Nepal. I was privileged enough to attend boarding school all my life. I come from a lower middle class family and my parents worked really hard so that I could get a quality education from an early age and I am thankful to them. But was it really quality education though? In 2nd grade, I vaguely remember memorizing the definition of ‘population.’ Next day, when the teacher asked everyone in the class one by one to repeat the definition, those who were able to memorize word by word were provided with 5 minutes refreshment break to go relax outside. Those who didn’t, had to stay in and reiterate the same lines several times until they were able to. I think I got to enjoy the break. I didn’t really understand what the word ‘population’ meant, I doubt at that age anyone in that classroom did, but I could tell the definition word by word from the book. We were only taught what the definition of ‘population’ was, the exact same sentence that was written in the textbook and nothing more. Our school system only teaches us to pass the exam. That’s what the success is measured on, both for schools and for students. Parents pay extra tuition to send their children to the boarding school so the teachers there can force you to remember things, not to understand but remember! They aren’t concerned about making you a better person in life or preparing you with skills required to think independently. They just want you to pass the exams so their school can be marketed better next academic year to attract new students. My school in 10 th grade had 100 percent passing rate in the SLC exam. We were forced to stay in school hostel for the final six months, waking up 4 in the morning and going to bed at 11PM. What did we do for 19 hours? Memorize all day every day! Every problems that were in the SLC exam preparation booklet (Question bank) were practiced and repeated hundreds of time to the point where sometimes you would have a nightmare about it. We were not there to learn, teachers weren’t there to teach! Everyone from students to parents to teachers were focused on passing the SLC exam with highest grade possible. And I’m not just shit talking on my school, all other schools around were doing the same thing. There was competition and pressure on everyone.





What about public schools? Most government schools don’t have enough resources to function, let alone provide quality education. Budgets allocated for these public schools are lost somewhere in between. We as a society look down on public schools. Students there already feel inferior. Teachers have no pressure whatsoever. Students from public schools are more likely to not go to college, their dropout rate is higher, parents who send their children to public schools aren’t expecting much either. It’s like a waste of time for most students. Their education is not going to give them any return. Well, there are few outliers who go on to succeed but these are one in a ten thousand cases to say at least. And these outliers most of the time come from a socially and economically adept family. If you are a public school student and come from a economically and socially backward family background, it's very likely your education is not going to help you in your future. You probably will never even use it. If private school education in Nepal is set up to disappoint you in life, public school education is set to straight up fail you.





Is this going to change anytime soon? How long until we can finish a bachelor degree in Nepal and find a job here that pays our rent, bill and food? How long until a high school graduate knows exactly what their passion and talent is? When will teachers actually encourage students to think outside the box and not just implant their biases and prejudices on student’s mind? When will students feel excited about going to school and learning something new everyday? Are parents ever going to stop judging their children based on the exam scores? All these problems doesn’t seem like something that can be overturned within a night or even months or may be not even a few years. We need a practical education that prepares us for real world and not just for examination. Students aren’t encouraged to think on their own. If a student ever questions a teacher or disagrees with them, they are immediately spurned in a way that they will never question teachers again. Their self confidence and creativity is shattered. Private schools and colleges assign textbooks to their students based on favoritism, someone who teaches there, maybe someone the principle knows or sometimes even someone who gives them the most commissions. And most of these textbooks are ridiculous. They literally have every questions for teachers and all the answers to those questions for students. This doesn’t leave any space for critical thinking, both for teachers and students. Workload on students is also a lot compared to other advance education curriculum around the world. In Nepal, students spend 6 days a week, at least 6 hours a day in school. This does not leave them anytime outside of classroom and school to discover their interests and talents. Average number of school days in developed countries is around 180 days a year with 6-6.5 hours per day. This gives students a lot of extra time to thoroughly focus on school work at home and even participate in extracurricular activities to develop new hobbies and interests. Schools and colleges should be teaching classes on entrepreneurship, social justice, politics, ethics, creative writing and many other interdisciplinary subjects. This way we can create an interest among students to pursue their career in these fields. This is the only way to have a balance of educated manpower across all the disciplines. Most private schools and colleges are profit based and focus solely on results. There is no set provision for what a private school should follow and report. The teachers they hire are not even licensed. In fact, they can hire whoever they want as a teacher regardless of their education or background. There is no provision for tuition and fees. There is little to none extracurricular activities for students. Some schools do have some but they’re there to attract more kids for admissions, most of them don’t really care about discovering a talent. Even if they do have someone who is very talented at such an early age, schools don’t provide them with required platform to nurture their talent. There is a sports week once a year and for rest of the year, they never talk about sports again. What about research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students? I've never heard of those in any colleges and universities in Nepal. Even the thesis at the end of graduate study is unheard of. Those thesis are supposed to be made public and open for peer reviews. These are few problems to name, I can go on and on and we’re all aware about these problems. But nothing has been done yet!



