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University

Nepal

Very cheap to live, and nobody will publish what the degree costs.

4/5
ingredients confirmed
Still unknown: tuition
Living
~$500/mo
Single student, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.
Education
Useful here, unknown elsewhere
Research impact 30th percentile globally — median of 3 ranked universities (CWTS Leiden Open Edition 2025). Research output, not teaching quality; it informs the band, it does not set the score.
Work after study
No route, in a country that exports labour
Safety
Low
A hundred-and-eleventh of 163, and the largest deterioration recorded in South Asia this edition

More is being checked.

Where these figures came from

One row per ingredient. Open any of them for the source, how far we trust it, and when we last checked.

TuitionNo data yet

No figure recorded. At tier 1 there is no national fee schedule and the Medical Education Commission’s fee ceiling could not be read; at tier 2 Kathmandu University publishes the multiplier — SAARC students pay 1.5 times and other nationalities twice the normal fee — but its own fee-structure document is a two-page scan with no extractable text, and Tribhuvan publishes nothing for foreigners; at tier 3 only education agents quote, and they quote packages for Indian medical applicants. Applying the multiplier to a local fee would be making a number, not citing one. See the Pathoff method, section 14-5.

Confidence
no figure
Living~$500/mo

Pathoff judgement directed by evidence, not computed from it: the country’s position comes from the World Bank household consumption price level for 2024 (0.264 of the United States, CC BY 4.0 — the ICP benchmark carried forward annually by the World Bank’s own method); the US reference budget is ours. See the Pathoff method, section 12.

Single student, all in. Compared at country level, so capital cities and large metros run higher. The price level behind it prices the basket residents buy, and a foreign renter cannot reach the cheap end of local housing — poorer countries may still sit too low here.

Confidence
made by us from the source
EducationUseful here, unknown elsewhere

Pathoff education rubric (the Pathoff method, section 9-1), degree band "Locally solid, externally unknown": Nepali degrees work in the Nepali labour market and are recognised for medical practice across parts of South Asia after examination. Mid-band: outside the region no institution here is a name.

Research impact 30th percentile globally — median of 3 ranked universities (CWTS Leiden Open Edition 2025). Research output, not teaching quality; it informs the band, it does not set the score.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Work after studyNo route, in a country that exports labour

Pathoff outcome rubric (the Pathoff method, section 10-2), degree outcome band "A route you cannot plan around": Graduation confers no period to stay, and a work permit requires both an employer and Department of Labour approval in an economy built around sending workers abroad rather than admitting them. Above the floor because permits are issued and the process is written down.

Confidence
made by us from the source
Rule
No change known to us
Last checked
2026-09
SafetyLow

Global Peace Index 2026: rank 111 of 163, score 2.143. Converted by the Pathoff GPI formula (GPI in lib/scoring.ts)

A hundred-and-eleventh of 163, and the largest deterioration recorded in South Asia this edition

Confidence
made by us from the source

What it is like here

Nepal educates a lot of foreign students, almost all of them Indians in its medical colleges, and it does so through education agents rather than published prices. That is the problem with this page: the universities publish a rule — non-SAARC students pay double — and not the number the rule produces. Living costs are the lowest on this site after India, and nothing follows the degree.

How the process works

1

Get a written fee quotation before applying

The published multiplier does not tell you the price, and agents are not the university.

Timing not confirmed
2

Student visa on the letter of admission

Renewed annually and tied to continued enrolment.

⏱ 2–4 months

Where students go

Kathmandu
Both major universities and every employer that hires graduates
Dhulikhel
The private university campus, an hour out and much quieter

Open any ingredient above to see where its figure came from, how far we trust it and when we last checked. Nothing here is a substitute for the official source. Last reviewed 2026-09-04.

Photograph of Nepal by Bernard Gagnon, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.