Prez decries state of higher education

President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday evening lamented that the quality of higher education in the country was still poor, despite improvement in the creation of educational infrastructure. He sought everybody’s cooperation to “reverse the trend”.

“As I speak to you, there are 723 universities and 35,000 colleges across the country where nearly 2 crore students are receiving higher education. Unfortunately, none of these institutions have found a place in the rating agencies’ top 200 universities in the world. Every year, nearly 2 lakh of our students are moving abroad for better-quality higher education,” Mukherjee told a gathering of students at a function here to mark the golden jubilee of Rama Devi Women’s College in state capital Bhubaneswar.

The President said the current state of affairs was more painful as India was once the leader in providing quality higher education to the entire world.

“India was a world leader in providing quality higher education not for a decade or two but for 1,800 long years, from sixth century BC to 12 century AD. During these period, not one or two universities, like Nalanda or Takshila, but several world-class institutions in the field of higher education were created in the country.”