Gap between academic research & professional practice in Nepali higher education

Universities in Nepal, along with their numerous affiliated colleges in various domains of specialization, have gradually acknowledged and embraced the importance of research as an integral part of their academic practices. After all, research activities enable scholars in any domain of knowledge—sociology, economics, education, engineering, or management—to either examine or explore the relationship between their academic learning and practices, preferences, possibilities, and problems that are emerging in real-world settings. Through research activities, scholars can also acquire essential professional skills like the application of concepts, processes, steps, and theories learned in academia for the analysis of real-world problems, data management, inference, contextualization, and evidence-based interpretations. As a result, educational institutions associated with Nepali higher education regularly organize conferences, seminars, research workshops, and data analysis training sessions to support their scholars and faculty members with publications and participation in different conferences.

However, so much of the research-based knowledge and evidence generated in Nepali academia never gets implemented in practice that there is a huge research-professional practice gap in Nepali higher education. Therefore, it is no surprise that the libraries of universities find it worthless to keep archives of graduate projects, post-graduate theses, and dissertations; hence, after some time, most of them are simply sold off to scrap dealers.