The President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee addressing after inaugurating the Grassroots Innovation Exhibition, during the Third Convocation of Nagaland University, at Lumami, Nagaland on May 15, 2013.
The Governor of Nagaland, Dr. Ashwani Kumar and the Chief Minister of Nagaland, Shri Neiphiu Rio are also seen.
Lumami, May 15 (ANI): President Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday called upon universities and academic institutions to take the lead in meeting the moral challenge of our times and ensuring that our civilizational values of love for motherland; performance of duty; compassion for all; tolerance for pluralism; respect for women and elderly; truth and honesty in life; discipline and self-restraint in conduct, and responsibility in action are fully entrenched in the young minds.
President Mukherjee, who attended the third convocation of Nagaland University at Lumami, speaking on the occasion said ‘education is a powerful tool for social thinking and transformation’.
“The recent increase in cases of brutal assault on women and children has shaken the collective conscience of our nation. These unfortunate incidents underscore the urgency for us to introspect at the erosion of values and to devise effective measures for the safety and security of our women and children. We must identify the causes of moral decline in our society,” he added.
President Mukherjee said the Indian Constitution has laid down that we have to build our society based on the freedom of human spirit, economic opportunities for all and social justice.
“Our economic growth will rely increasingly on the knowledge economy. Thus, a sound higher education system in our country is an imperative,” he added.
President Mukherjee said the higher education system in India rests on the three pillars of quality, affordability and accessibility. “At the end of the Eleventh Five Year Plan period, there were a total of 659 degree awarding institutions and over 33,000 colleges. During the Eleventh Five Year Plan period, 65 new Central Institutions, including 21 Central Universities, were established. Except for one state, there is at least one Central University in every state of the country,” said President Mukherjee.
“Despite this, the problems of quantity and quality persist. We are deficient in the number of quality academic institutions, on account of which, many bright students go abroad for higher studies. There are more than 2 lakh Indian students studying abroad, including US and UK. We should be able to draw our students to seek higher education in their own country,” he added.
President Mukherjee said despite India’s higher education system being the second largest in the world, the enrolment rate for the 18-24 years age group in India is only 7 percent.
“Compared to this, it is 21 percent in Germany and 34 percent in the US. This effectively denies many good students the opportunity to acquire higher education. We have to increase accessibility in higher education as a means to achieve greater inclusion,” he added.
President Mukherjee further said ‘innovative teaching methodologies should be adopted by our universities by increasing the use of technology’.
“The infrastructure of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology has great potential to facilitate collaborative information sharing. Transmission of important lectures to students
studying in institutions situated far off from the urban centres is possible now,” he added.
Asserting that the success of inclusion in higher education also depends on affordability, President Mukherjee said:
“Meritorious students from difficult socio-economic background should be assisted to pursue higher education by measures like scholarships, student loans and self-help schemes.”
“Shortage of faculty has hampered our efforts at improving the standards of education. In Central Universities, vacancy is about 38 per cent. Immediate steps should be taken to fill up the vacancies. To tide over this crisis, we must also resort to technology solutions such as e-classrooms,” President Mukherjee said.
“Our teachers must possess the latest information and knowledge so that they can give their students the best education. The refresher programmes organized by the Academic Staff Colleges should be reviewed more frequently to retain their relevance to contemporary teaching,” he added.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/entrench-civilizational-values-in-young-minds-says-mukherjee/
