KATHMANDU: Educational consultancy entrepreneurs have declared an indefinite, phased protest demanding the immediate amendment or repeal of the newly enacted Educational Consultancy, Language Teaching and Preparatory Class (Operation and Management) Regulation, 2026.

Organized under a joint struggle committee, the businesses announced that they will escalate to a complete shutdown—including handing over office keys to the District Administration Office—if the government refuses to hold talks.

The agitation begins with staff wearing black armbands during regular hours, followed by coordinated, placard-carrying street demonstrations across Kathmandu on July 17.

Industry representatives argue that the new regulations are impractical, demanding the extension of the current one-year license validity to five years, the reversal of restrictions on foreign college commission channels, and the lifting of the complete ban on abroad-education fairs and seminars.

This aggressive regulatory shift follows a massive wave of student fraud, high-profile arrests, and police raids across the Kathmandu Valley earlier this year targeting unlicensed operators, fake institutional placement schemes, and illegal overseas job rackets.

Driven by a massive study-abroad pipeline that saw households spend over Rs 47 billion on outbound education in just five months, the Cabinet approved binding new rules on July 8 to eliminate untraceable “shoestring operations.”

The new framework mandates a heavy Rs 2.5 million cash security deposit to filter out under-capitalized firms, forces all transactions through transparent digital bank channels, and places full financial liability on consultancies if students are stranded abroad.

Simultaneously, a parallel regulation forces foreign-affiliated colleges in Nepal to prove within three years that their international partner universities rank in the global top 1,000.

While the government stands firm that these measures are vital to protect vulnerable youths, the Educational Consultancy Association of Nepal (ECAN) warns the rules will collapse smaller local businesses, threatening to bring the country’s massive student pipeline to a grinding halt.