The new academic year will introduce a semester system at the postgraduate level in Tribhuvan University (TU). Every department of the central campus in Kirtipur is gearing to start the admission procedure for the new semester.
Students enrolling at the central campus in mid-February will have to sit for an entrance exam. The respective Deans’ offices have stated that they are all set to take the exam.
The offices also shared that curricula for the first semester is also ready.
According to the Deans’ offices, students will have to pay higher tuition fees as the semester system will commence with examinations conducted every six months with prompt publication of results.
The best part is that the education will now be practical and research based.
Assistant Dean of Faculty of Humanities, Nilam Kumar Sharma, informed that necessary preparations to implement the semester system in 22 out of 32 central departments in Kirtipur have already been arranged.
The semester system will be applicable from the new academic year for Nepali, English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Linguistics, History, Culture, Sociology, Political Studies, Buddhist Studies, Psychology, Fine Arts, Rural Development, Population Studies, Journalism, Economics, Geography and Library Science departments, said Sharma.
Students in the Humanities faculty will be charged Rs 40,000 per semester, he added. Before the semester system was introduced, students had to pay only Rs 16,000 per year.
Similarly, postgraduate students of Business Studies will have to pay approximately Rs 25,000 per semester. In the yearly system, the MBS classes were conducted at just Rs 9,000 per year.
Dean of the Faculty of Management, Dr Dev Raj Adhikari informed, “We’ll be running classes in three shifts – morning, day and evening – with a total of 50 students in each shift.”
According to Prof Dr Chitra Bahadur Budhathoki, Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Education, the semester system will be implemented in all the 12 departments under the Central Department of Education in Kirtipur.
“Under political pressure, we were forced to accommodate 300 students in a single class. There weren’t enough seats for the students and the noise would make it virtually impossible for the lecturers and professors to conduct the class effectively,” said Budhathoki.
He further shared that they aim to admit a total of 1,300 students for 12 different subjects in each semester. Breaking down the number of students subject-wise, 300 students will be admitted in English, 200 in Nepali, 200 in Mathematics and around 100 students each in other remaining subjects.
“Semester system will not only ensure admission of limited number of students, but also help conduct exams and publish results on a timely basis,” Budhathoki informed.
However, Tribhuvan University’s Faculty of Law will see no semester system this year. The Faculty’s Assistant Dean Dr Hari Sharan Chakhun remarked, “We haven’t prepared necessary infrastructures to introduce the semester system yet.”
On the other hand, the Free Students Union have padlocked all the 32 central departments of TU citing that the fees hike that comes along with the introduction of the semester system will bar many students from studying further.
Source: Republica National daily
