Donors may have their own reasons for choosing one area of research over the others. But experts point out other problems that are of immediate concern and need to be addressed first. For example, the quality of researchers produced by our education system.
“Firstly, talented people don’t choose Social Science as a course of study. Many of them prefer Medical Science, Engineering or Commerce. Social Science is neglected because we, teachers and the government, haven’t been able to present it as a promising subject and show opportunities to students,” said Mrigendra Bahadur Karki, Lecturer at Tribhuvan University’s Centre for Nepal and Asian Studies (CNAS). [break]
Unfortunately, even those few who are involved don’t take research seriously, according to Karki.
“There was a student who wanted her research approved of ‘without any fuss’ because she had a visa deadline to meet,” Karki said. “Another woman, whose husband is a professor, copied somebody else’s research but forgot to change the name in the preface where the original student, also a married woman, had thanked her husband.”
No wonder, Karki envies the fact that reputed colleges across the world get to scrutinize the quality of Nepali students at several levels, starting with the admissions.
Both Karki of CNAS and Bal Gopal Baidya of New Era feel that students at all levels must be encouraged to carry out independent work.
“From the beginning, the focus of our university system has been on rote learning rather than research,” said Baidya. “There’s no emphasis on ways to improve a student’s ability to think, analyze, write, organize and present. Research culture is virtually non-existent.”
He also calls into question the quality of teachers. In major universities, he said, in order to get the post of permanent professorship, you must have published in a refereed journal.
“They call it ‘publish or perish’,” said Baidya. “To get an article published in reputed journals is a huge achievement and is not easy to accomplish. So, teachers there have pressures right from the beginning to do research and to publish. Merely teaching isn’t enough.”
That kind of pressure is not there in our education system, Baidya lamented. “By comparison, here, you can write anything and present it in a book form or get an article published in any journal outside the country and get credit for your work.”
Underscoring the poor quality of Nepali researchers is the fact that very few of them get cited and published in well acclaimed international journals.
“The review process for publication in major foreign journals is strenuous. International journals published by Sage, Rutledge, and Oxford have an 18-month period for peer review,” Karki said. “Not so in the case of journals published in Nepal. There are no criteria or standards defining what can or can’t be published.”
Journals published by CNAS are comparatively more valued by the TU than other journals as they are peer reviewed.
“But like everything else in Nepal, even academia is highly politicized,” Karki went on. “Lecturers and professors use connections to get their articles published in CNAS journals.”
In the current scenario where political divisions have infiltrated every sector, the committee that approves of research works to be published in the CNAS journal is no exception.
“There’s always conflict about whether a particular finding should be published,” Karki said. “You can neither criticize nor praise any person, organization, community or political party because one person or the other in the committee will raise objections.”
Politics, Baidya said, is an overriding problem, but there are other problems as well. “The university must be the primary training ground for would-be researchers. But you can’t hope to train everybody on the job,” he said. “Even we, as a private-sector research firm, can accommodate only 15 to 20 researchers, but what about others?”
University teachers must be asked to conduct certain amount of research every year, according to Baidya. “However, as their salaries are low, grants must be available,” he added.
Teachers’ low pay is certainly a major handicap in the effort to build strong and vibrant social science research institutions, Karki said.
“Senior teachers go out in search of consultancy jobs, as they have family to take care of,” Karki said. In such scenarios, he added, students are left under the care of junior teachers who are ill-equipped to supervise them.
“That’s a vicious circle and it affects the quality of researchers we as an institution produce,” said Karki. “Thankfully, debates on these pressing problems have gathered pace, and sooner than later things may change for better.”
The writer can be reached at amendrapokharel@gmail.com
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