Kathmandu University is an autonomous, not-for-profit, non-government, public institution dedicated to maintain high standards of academic excellence. The University is committed to develop leaders in professional areas through quality education.

The University is located in a mountainous landscape in Dhulikhel Municipality about 30 kilometer northeast of Kathmandu having round-the-year pleasant climate and Panoramic Himalayan Views.

Within a period of 13 years, it has established a track record of academic excellence. At present, the University offers various intermediate, undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level programs in science, engineering, medicine, management, education, pharmacy, environment, music, human & natural resources, information technology and biotechnology through its six different schools: School of Science, School of Management, School of Engineering, School of Medical Sciences, School of Arts and School of Education. In addition to 2500 students in its constituent schools, 2900 students are studying in its affiliated colleges. Annual intake capacity of KU is 880, of them 350 intermediate, 330 undergraduate, and 200 graduate level studies. KU affiliated colleges have annual intake capacity of 972.

The academic programs of the University are based on credit-semester system with continuous internal evaluations. The University has maintained 1 to 12 teachers–student ratio. However, KU is very cautious in recruitment of every single faculty. The staff strength at KU is 387, of them 255 for teaching and 132 for administrative and support service. The academic calendar of minimum 230 days is strictly adhered to; admission of students is based on merit in their past examination and written and oral entrance tests.

Students are well represented in the Senate but political unionism is avoided. Quality control is strictly followed in all programs of the university. In addition, to continually enhance the educational standard, KU has been successfully collaborating with more than fifty universities and institutions of international repute for faculty and students exchange programs, credit transfer and joint research work and exchange information. This has helped KU to establish well in the world community.

Along with its 48 years long journey, the state-owned university has expanded its programs in different disciplines. There are five technical institutes and four non-technical faculties, which offer 300 courses in certificate, 1079 courses in bachelor and 1000 courses in master level. Currently, the total courses offered by the university number more than 2400.

Both technical and non-technical offer Ph.D. programs in different disciplines. TU always has been trying to offer varieties of courses as demand by the nation. Recently TU has decided to offer Biotechnology, Dietician, eMBA, Distance Learning Courses at Master Level and MA in Conflict Peace and Development. M.Phil courses have been started in faculty of Management, Humanities and Education.

Before 1980, TU had offered the courses through its constituent campuses only. With the increasing number of students interested to join in the Tribhuvan University, there was a necessity of establishing the colleges in the private sector because the constituent campuses of university alone could not cater to the demand of the market. So from 1980, TU started giving affiliation to private colleges to conduct various programs in different levels. In that year 24 colleges had got affiliation to offer the certificate programs. So far 416 colleges have got affiliation, which are located throughout the nation.

There are altogether 272746 students in TU who have been studying at various levels. The majority of the students (61.27%-167114) are in its 60 constituent campuses spread throughout the country and the remaining (38.73%-105632) in the 416 affiliated colleges. It shows that numbers of students in constituent campuses are very high. This is because the cheap education fee and easy access.

Tribhuvan University has 6160 teaching faculty members and 6952 non teaching staff including support staff in its constituent campuses.

The approximate amount of money that has been generated for the university's development efforts till this date is worth Rs. 155 million. Of this sum, Rs. 70 million is for land, Rs. 60 million is for building construction. The remaining Rs. 25 million is for development of the road, on landscaping and on purchasing equipment. The additional amount of money required to complete the entire construction work, as per the master plan, is Rs. 1.3 billion. This is equivalent to US $ 25.86 million. Of this the amount Rs. 856.6 million or 67% of the entire cost has to be allocated for civil construction. The remaining allocations are for procuring furniture, equipment vehicles and books and journals.

Kathmandu University has been able to attract a pool of committed and qualified faculty members. Through the help of these faculty members curricula for various programs have been drafted. Schools are offering programs at the undergraduate as well as the post-graduate levels. These programs have elicited encouraging responses from students and parents. Except for the School of Management all other schools have already started operating at the university's premises at Dhulikhel. Four batches of students have completed their MBA programs from the School of Management. The first convocation of the university was held on August 7, 1995 and the convocation address was given by an eminent management guru Dr. M.B. Atreya of India. The second convocation was held on December 8, 1996 and the convocation address was delivered by Professor N. Gyanam, Vice Chancellor, Pondichhary University and the President of Association of Indian Universities. The third convocation was held on November 9, 1997 and the convocation address was delivered by Professor (Dr.) M. Rammohan Rao, Director, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India. The fourth convocation was held in September 17, 1998 was addressed by the prominent scholar and ex-vice chancellor of Norwegian Institute of Technology, Norway. For the first time in Nepal, Kathmandu University convocated a batch of mechanical, electrical, electronics and computer science and engineering graduates.

In our endeavour to develop Kathmandu University we believe that these are definitely some encouraging indicators.

Essential practical ingredients for quality education are good faculty members, good students, good library and a good environment. Putting together all these elements is indeed a daunting task and requires substantial financial resources. Despite the difficulties we intend to do just that. We are committed to developing an institution of high academic standards in Nepal together with friends of the university.