Fashioning the Future

Chapter Three explores the potential and limitations that educated young Nepalis associated with their university studies. Changes in the composition of the student body indicate that a growing number of students from social groups previously not represented at university now obtain academic credentials. Their participation in higher education gives reason to hope for a more socially just and prosperous future. In order to take full advantage of new educational opportunities, young people often felt compelled to relocate to the capital city or to go abroad. For the majority of these students, however, certain educational pathways associated with an upper social status remained out of reach. In identifying a number of social influences and structural constraints, which powerfully shaped young people’s educational trajectories and related future orientations, the findings presented in this chapter allow for a critically engagement with the concept of the ‘capacity to aspire’.