Prez calls for innovative changes in academic system

Pitching for a more flexible, transparent and student friendly educational system, President Pranab Mukherjee today said innovative changes were needed to make the country's academic setup globally competitive.
"Academic regulations must be streamlined to create a more flexible, transparent and student friendly educational system," Mukherjee said while addressing the IIT-Bhubaneswar convocation programme.
"Improvement of academic system calls for innovative changes. Our examination system must incorporate modern methods of evaluation. Top quality teachers must be recruited. A spirit of competition among universities must be infused."
Mukherjee said the only way to take India into the league of leading nations is by producing highly capable engineers, scientists, doctors, academicians and other intellectuals.

He also said that it is the "bounden duty" of all universities and engineering institutes to put research at the forefront of their curriculum and lauded IIT-Bhubaneswar's efforts in this direction.
As many as 129 students are enrolled in PhD programmes in the pursuit of cutting edge results in various fields, Mukherjee said.
"It has also bagged 13 industrial consultancy projects," he added.
The President, however, expressed anguish that due to lack of quality, very few academic institutions can claim global reckoning and there is not a single Indian university or IIT among the top 200 as per international ranking.