Higher Education in Bhutan: Progress and Challenges

Abstract

Higher education in Bhutan is one of the most recent and important additions to the country’s educational system, with the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) having been set up only in 2003 to incorporate and direct a set of nine colleges and tertiary education institutes previously functioning under institutions ranging from ministries of the Royal Government of Bhutan to Delhi University in India. Private tertiary education is an even newer phenomenon there, with Bhutan’s only private college having opened in 2009. This chapter briefly describes the organizational structure and functioning of higher education in Bhutan, as well as the content areas on which it focuses. It then highlights several of the major issues currently facing tertiary education in Bhutan: a) the desire to markedly expand tertiary enrollment within the country while keeping the costs incurred by the government for this under control, b) the promotion of high quality research in an environment with limited human and financial resources available for this task, c) finding the right balance between central oversight and the growing need for innovation in education in a rapidly changing society increasing connected to the outside world, and d) the “fit” between the attitudes, knowledge and skills of current college graduates and those needed for the kind of vibrant knowledge-based economy Bhutan is hoping to create.