University, founded in 1959, is the first university and the pioneer institute of higher education in Nepal. It is named after the late King Tribhuvan. It was only after its establishment that higher education within the country was available to the common Nepali people. The infrastructure of Tribhuvan University was built at Kirtipur where its foundation stone was laid in 1958. Five kilometers to the south-west of the capital, the university is situated at Kirtipur.

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.

* Producing skilled human resources needed for the national development.
* Absorbing more than 95 percent of the total student enrollment of higher education.
* Offering higher education with lowest fee.