Calling attention to the poor quality of Indian technical education, President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday urged the private sector to strive for enhancing higher technical education standards in the country in a changing global milieu.
Noting that while a formidable educational infrastructure was in place to cater to students, Mr. Mukherjee said the country was deficient in terms of institutions imparting quality education.
“No Indian institution is ranked amongst the top 200 universities in the world as per reputed surveys. While ancient Indian universities attracted scholars from the world over, today, lakhs of bright Indian students go abroad seeking higher education,” said Mr. Mukherjee, while addressing the convocation ceremony of Symbiosis International University in Pune.
Remarking that leading global universities like Harvard, Yale and Stanford had evolved out of private sector initiative, he called for a deepening of private sector involvement in Indian education.
Exhorting institutes to engage deeply with social issues, Mr. Mukherjee said that major initiatives aimed at inclusive development like the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana envisaged the adoption of villages for holistic development and their transformation into model villages for wider replication.
“I have urged Central higher educational institutes to work with at least five villages each by identifying problems in the villages,” he said.
Mr. Mukherjee further pointed to faculty development as a critical component towards achieving high educational standards.
“To keep pace with the information boom as well as continual refinements in disciplines, the faculty have to be trained in content and modern pedagogies,” he said, urging resort to technology tools like e-classrooms and knowledge networks.
Spiritual guru Dada J. P. Vaswani and academician Haresh Shah, professor emeritus at the Stanford University in the US, were awarded honorary D.Litt degrees on the occasion.
