Dissecting PhD sagas—II

TU is not serving the interests of doctoral students who want to become competent researchers.

About six years ago, Nepal’s oldest university, Tribhuvan University (TU), adopted a “PhD by coursework” route for its doctoral students in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FoHSS). In so doing, it has, in theory, abandoned the “PhD by dissertation” route it had operated since its early days. As someone who did a PhD via the coursework route in an American university during the 1990s, I welcome this change. However, the execution of the new modality leaves a lot to be desired.