Universities: The size debate

Small universities with focused teaching and research agenda are likely to be more successful.

In Nepal, we suffer from the myth that all universities need to be “comprehensive”, and therefore, big in terms of student enrolment. While there seem to be many definitions of what a comprehensive university means, many seem to agree that it is an institution that offers degrees to undergraduate and graduate students in many disciplines in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Some would even add that such universities should also offer professional degrees in business, engineering, law and medicine. The “natural” corollary of such an imagination equals a comprehensive university with a large student body.