Books, teachers and educations depreciation

1500+ colleges in Nepal affiliated to 50+ national and international universities. 500k+ university students currently enrolled in various colleges and institutions with the highest number (77%) being TU. Management education attracts the highest number of students, as per relevant sources. Apart from few reputed colleges that offer innovative management degrees for uplifting students' career, the rest of them mostly run by ‘inert’ shareholder businessmen are facing subtle education crisis.?

• There is change management and it's a challenge.
• Problems with long term financing and illiquidity.
• Low student teacher ratio.
• Hooliganism.
• Information recruitment system.
• Generational behavior crisis.
• Zero green environment.
• ‘Kirana store’ management policy and thinking.
• High staff turnover.
• Mass absenteeism.

This kind of soft crisis somehow goes unnoticed when the very ones running such old-fashioned institution are so adamant to their vision and mission but are now realizing that the new genre of management students and lecturers demand a different set of education systems, processes, leadership, pedagogy and classroom environment and more to modernize and scale the institution as well as build their own careers.?

A closer diagnosis of this crisis puts forward issues like~

• No teaching and learning innovation strategy.
• Poor classroom infrastructure.
• One way communication.
• No student recruitment strategy.
• Limited evaluation.
• Little or no collaboration amongst education, university and industry.

My point is either the leadership thinking should remain as it is and continue to serve the target demographic student in a more efficient manner or the whole philosophy of education should change. The former strategy seems feasible to me. The future of education service cannot afford a large number of capitalistic oriented colleges and universities to dominate the environment and allow the new genre of key stakeholders (students and teacher) to float in traditional thinking than to work seriously towards setting and delivering quality education to the students.

Another big issue is with the publication business. There are two or three such houses that dominate the market with high barriers to entry, high competition and low threat of substitutes. I am well versed with BBA/BBS/BBM/MBA/MBS and similar management degree’s books and study materials, and I find that there is limited learning content to actually have a prosperous and rich learning and knowledge exploitation. This trend will continue if we allow it to flow. I have heard many saying that these books by Nepalese authors having long term royalty contract with book publishers for more than three-four decades should not be followed by students and rather being requested to procure books written by foreign authors. I am surprised though. A subject, for instance, Financial Management is normally a 48-hour course taught over 2 months with class duration of not more than an hour or forty-five minutes but then students are requested to read foreign authors book which are well beyond eight hundred pages vs three hundred pages by Nepalese authors. Whom to follow??

If I was a student, I would rather rely on lecturers notes and take online tutorials then to stay foolish. But the problem now is the most lecturers do not have the practice of making student friendly notes and study materials to make students life easier. What happens then is students are forced to learn online. Again, there are no dedicated online learning platform for management education in Nepal. To cut the long story short, book publishers do not care about authors content, teachers do not care about authors content, colleges do not assess the learning content before any lecturer embarks on the teaching job, and the students are never given an opportunity to access learning materials as per their needs and requirements. At the end, the job market suffers.?

• How can those colleges and universities stay attuned and aligned to the skill-based requirements of the job market and innovate in terms of curriculum, pedagogy and learning centric models for economic growth?
• What technology can support this change?
• What leadership pattern is needed?
• What kind of financing innovation could bridge the gap between losing education luster and quality education imperatives??
• Why don't some PEVC invest in high growth potential educational institutions?

So, I have few things in my mind~

Study material innovation

• Market and industry knowledge finely adapted to existing curriculum, study norms and teaching practices.
• Concepts, methods, techniques and practices fully aligned reflecting the recent and current developments in world education and future course of action.

Lecture innovation

• Bring your own material and deliver quality learning experience.
• Adapting those material to the current examination system and pattern of knowing how a students absorbs the learning experience.

Institutional innovation

• Investing in growth enablers like technology, green economy and safe and secure learning ecosystem
• Audit, monitoring and control evaluation of education system

Next, examinations~

• Exams in the classroom, but what are we trying to examine is not clear yet. Mindset? Knowledge? Patience?
• What if the exam time can be diverted for some creatives stuffs

Today we’ve created an actor-based education environment where we are required to act in a certain way and be governed thereof. School, of course, is a basic necessity. Thats where we learn and act in a certain way, in a controlled environment. But beyond school, choices exist. But bad governance beyond schools tends to control specific subsystems of learning pattern, pulls students into something that is not creative, all with fee binding agreement. Educational institutions are an ongoing entity. Somebody’s passion is a child's future. It's a natural cycle. But the establishment should be rooted in strong culture, long history and innovative trend to reverse engineer the design and development of educational environment at all times. This we were the current system is flawed.?

Time has come to take a systematic view of education. That is the place I believe can change for good.

Let's vouch for classrooms to be more inclusive, engaging and action filled. Let's allow technology to be fluid for higher efficiency, higher productivity and more fun and let's embrace digital model of learning.

Choice's matter.