India needs to retain brilliant students: Pranab

New Delhi, Feb 8: Lamenting that not a single Indian higher educational institute figures among the top 200 universities in the world, President Pranab Mukherjee today suggested that India must have "the capacity to keep the brilliant students and teachers in its system".

The President said this while inaugurating the Diamond Jubilee Celebrations of Kishinchand Chellaram College of Arts, Commerce and Science here.

"There is no lack of talent," the President said, referring to scholars like nobel laureates Amartya Sen, Hargovind Khurana, Chandrasekhar and Venkataraman who graduated from Indian universities.

"But unfortunately, they got the Nobel prize when they were working outside India in some universities of USA, UK or somewhere else . We must have the capacity to keep the brilliant students, brilliant teachers in our system," he said.

The President also expressed concern over poor standards in many higher educational institutions in the country and added that a concerted effort was underway to spread the infrastructure for it.

"There are now over 650 universities and 33,000 colleges in India. The density of educational institutions has increased from 10 to 14 institutions per thousand square kilometre during the 11th Plan period," Mukherjee said in the presence of dignitaries including Maharashtra Governor K Shankaranarayan, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, actor Amitabh Bachchan and industrialist Anil Ambani.

Despite India's higher education system being second largest in the world, the enrolment rate among the 18-24 age group in India is only 7 per cent, he said.

"Compared to this, it is 21 per cent in Germany and 34 per cent in the US," the President said, adding that "compounding the woe of low coverage was lack of standards in many of our higher educational institutions which were way below global benchmarks," he said.

PTI