India needs to redefine education strategy: Prez

New Delhi, March 19: The time has come to "redefine" the way education is imparted in India as it is "simply unacceptable" that no Indian university finds a place amongst top global institutions, President Pranab Mukherjee said today.

Addressing the 90th Convocation of Delhi University, Mukherjee also stressed on the need for enhancing enrolments and improvising modules that can enable better learning and bringing higher education closer to remote corners of the country to remove imbalances.

"The education sector is today confronted by problems relating to both quantity and quality...If we are to redefine the way education is imparted by our educational institutions, the time is now," Mukherjee said.

According to an international ranking of universities, he said, no Indian varsity finds a place amongst the global top 200.

"This you would agree, is simply unacceptable. We must develop our universities into global leaders, and for that, the best practices in other countries should be carefully studied and adopted with necessary changes to suit our conditions," he said.

There is now at least one Central University in every state but the question that one should ask is whether we are satisfied with the progress that we are making in the educational sector.

"An honest answer would reveal that we have miles and miles to go before we can say that we have arrived," he said.

Noting that the education sector is confronted by problems relating to both quantity and quality, he said it is "disheartening" that many places in the country do not have a higher educational institution that are within the practical reach of aspiring students.

On the brain-drain issue, Mukherjee was of the view that our systems were not "conducive to retaining talents", and hence, lose many of them to organisations within and outside the country.

In the convocation, 400 students were awarded doctoral, 6,500 post graduate and 65,000 graduate degrees.