Abstract
University education enables people to have better socio-economic return, engage in critical reflection of political affairs, social practices, and inequalities which subsequently strengthens democracy. The educational opportunities for disadvantaged people help them to break the vicious cycle of poverty, marginalization, and discrimination by enabling them to improve the social and economic status. The Government of Nepal has enacted the National Higher Education (HE) Policy, but it lags ensuring equitable opportunities for the marginalized community, particularly the Dalit community. Despite the constitutional commitment to provide equitable opportunities for educational development, Dalits who comprise above 13% population have been facing multitudes of exclusion in HE opportunities. Venanzi’s social exclusion perspective has been used to analyze the underrepresentation of Dalits in HE. The ethnocentrism-historically developed ethnic perspective manifested by the National Code of Conduct of Nepal in 1854; the discursive formation-micro-stories that explained the derogatory origin of Dalits and the hegemonic discourse-subtle form of power perpetrated by non-Dalit in system implementation curtail Dalit’s equitable participation in HE. Consequently, Dalits fail to move upward to the socioeconomic status which has impacted the overall development of the country. Mass advocacy and awareness campaign to deconstruct hierarchy-based caste system, data/evidence-based gender and social inclusion policy, increased participation of Dalits in decision-making positions, exploration of caste-related issues through periodic academic research and enactment of subsequent actions, inclusion of Dalit-related issues in HE curriculum, and arranging alternative education for geographically excluded Dalit community may enable Dalits to get HE. Key words: Equity, higher education, social exclusion, historicity, Dalit.
Highlights
Education has always been one of the key focuses of development strategy because education is undoubtedly a key tool to achieve human prosperity and wellbeing
This paper focuses on the analysis of caste-based system of Nepal which has a significant impact to the students from Dalit community in accessing and achieving cognitive domain in formal education and has become one of the key barriers in achieving quality and equitable education in Nepal
There is about 4.2% drop out from primary and secondary education and one third is from Dalit, only 4% Dalit children graduate to Higher Education (HE) (Centre of Education and Human Resource Development (CEHRD), 2019)
Summary
The educational opportunities for disadvantaged people help them to break the vicious cycle of poverty, marginalization, and discrimination by enabling them to improve the social and economic status. The Government of Nepal has enacted the National Higher Education (HE) Policy, but it lags ensuring equitable opportunities for the marginalized community, the Dalit community. The ethnocentrism-historically developed ethnic perspective manifested by the National Code of Conduct of Nepal in 1854; the discursive formation-micro-stories that explained the derogatory origin of Dalits and the hegemonic discourse-subtle form of power perpetrated by non-Dalit in system implementation curtail Dalit’s equitable participation in HE. Mass advocacy and awareness campaign to deconstruct hierarchy-based caste system, data/evidence-based gender and social inclusion policy, increased participation of Dalits in decision-making positions, exploration of caste-related issues through periodic academic research and enactment of subsequent actions, inclusion of Dalit-related issues in HE curriculum, and arranging alternative education for geographically excluded Dalit community may enable Dalits to get HE
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