Please Implement Semester!!

Maheshwor Rijal

Implementing the semester system for the master level courses in all its constituents’ colleges of Tribhuvan University in the Kathmandu valley has been recently cancelled due to the pressure from the students’ unions, blaming the decision was wrong as there are no adequate preparation and management regarding the physical infrastructures, the curriculum/syllabus design and the teachers’ availability.  Some says this is good to not to implement decision now as this not apt time. But, there are some circles of intellectual opposing the decision saying why the semester is a matter of headache for students’ union padlocking the campuses and threatening the college administration?  This was the great debate in academia recently.

Yes, we have been following the yearly education system except some faculties since a long decade in TU. I am not blaming the yearly based education system, but in the context of Nepal, everyone can see this is not effective since there is lack of platform for the research based learning.  This makes students only exam oriented all the time. Anyone can see, in the testing modalities of year based model of education, students go to the exam centre with piles of book and reading in the toilets.  And it is not contextual to test the students a year’s learning achievement within three/four hours of paper pencil test.  Thus, Nepali academia needs to have paradigm shift in terms of quality to get international recognition so that students would be autonous and the unemployment rate will get reduced.

Let me reflect myself here. I did my Bachelor from TU following the yearly system of education and completed the master level of study from the Kathmandu University under the semester system a year back. Then, I have found the remarkable difference in terms of teaching techniques, the guidance of the teachers, and the testing and evaluation.  I was examined every time by the tutors and busy in the research and the project works. There was no fear of examination since I was not judged only by paper pencil examination, and the more, I was evaluated based on my performance in every task assigned.  This makes me autonomous and proactive.  Thus, semester system has bundles of advantages if this is used wisely. 

Where there is a problem there is a solution also.  We need to make the academia as the centre of the excellence in the international community enhancing its quality. It’s urgent to reform the education of the varsity though there are challenges to implement the semester system as there is no appropriate preparation including the management in terms of input, process and output. We need to change the education system to make students proactive and develop learners’ autonomy.  In TU the students’ density is high and some students only appear in examination without taking classes.  For this case of students TU should lunch special package like distance or open mode of education.  For others, semester model is fine, I think.

Now, it’s time to seek the educational transformation breaking the boundary of route learning, memorization and banking modalities of education.  Only getting number in the examination is not an end, rather there is urgent need to make academia as a centre of excellence allowing research based learning so that there would be transformative and progressive changes in society. I, therefore, urge implementing semester in varsity is necessary to uplift the quality standards of education.