Quality Assurance and Accreditation Issues in Nepalese Higher Education

Abstract

The issue of quality assurance has become the focus of many institutions to enhance quality of Higher Education (HE). There are six universities to provide higher education in Nepal. Tribhuvan University (TU) is the oldest and largest university which covers major stake near about 93 percent in Nepalese higher education system. With the aim of examining the practices of quality assurance (QA) in TU, this study has been conducted by selecting the faculty members and other staffs of the faculties of management, education and humanities & social sciences as its respondents. The internal and ordinal scale data were analysed by using descriptive statistics and chi-square test with the help of SPSS 13.0 and Microsoft Excel. Additionally, reliability of the responses on interval-scaled questions was test by calculating Cronbach’s Alpha and an analysis was also made for subjective or open-ended questions. It is found that faculties play prominent role in assuring the academic quality has the highest average value and strict affiliation criteria set by the university influence positively in the quality performance of an institution has the lowest average value. Average value of the responses regarding factor determining is the highest on well trained and experienced resource persons. Therefore, well trained and experienced resource person is the main factor to determine quality assurance in higher education. It is found that improvement on curriculum, faculty development, establishing reward system, discouraging political pressure and providing strict rules and regulations assure the quality in higher education of TU.