Pressing for an overhaul of the country’s education sector, President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday said there is need for investment and a comprehensive policy which will help India to adapt to changing global educational challenges.
“We should not only make investment in education but we must have a sound national education policy which will adapt to the changing needs,” he said at the golden jubilee convocation ceremony of Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya.
Mukherjee said efforts must be made to raise academic level of Indian universities so that they can find place among the top 100 universities of the world. Emphasising on giving fillip to continuous research works at universities, mutual coordination and a constant dialogue among universities at global-level, he also called for devising academic curricula at universities as per local industrial needs.
Expressing concerns over the lack of quality in institutions to produce graduates for the global market, Mukherjee said it was exactly 80 years ago that an Indian university had given birth to a noble laureate CV Raman.
Thereafter, there has been a continuous void. Though India did produce talented graduates and Nobel prize winners like Amartya Sen, S Chandrashekhar and Hargovinid Khurana,
they won the prize while working at foreign universities and they earned universal recognition.
Efforts must be made to create similar environment in Indian universities. Our universities need to have a constant dialogue with the world’s best academic institutes and we must incorporate their strong attributes in our universities, the President said, adding that though our country do have a few academic institutes like IIM Kolkata, IIT Madras and Mumbai which are counted among the top 50 academic institutes of the world, unfortunately there is not a single university in our country which finds place even in the top 200 universities of the world. A concerted effort need to be made to bring Indian universities among the top 100 universities of the world.
He said there was no dearth of “good quality” teachers and faculty which can facilitate “good quality” students and create a conducive atmosphere in institutions.
lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and State Government ministers Kailash Vijayvargiya and Umashankar Gupta, among others, were present during the function at the university.