Education is the key to Economic Growth: President

Education is the key to access economic growth, said the President Pranab Mukherjee on 07 October 2013 while addressing a conference of directors of National Institutes of Technology (NIT) at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

"If we have to attain a growth rate of 9 per cent per year, as has been envisaged during the 12th Five Year Plan period, we must put in place enabling factors, most prominent of which is quality of higher education," said the President.

President Mukherjee has summoned for a two-day conference at Rashtrapati Bhavan to discuss moves required to improve the quality of technical education and development of faculty at the NITs.

During the conference, the president evoked that India's economy is third largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) and the growth rate is second after China. He further expressed his concern over quality of education in India.

While discussing the global positions of Indian premier Institutes/universities, he said that our institutions stand at nowhere in comparison with the best ones in the world. In two reputed international rankings of universities - the QS Ranking and Times Higher Education Ranking - not a single Indian university or institution finds place in the top 200," Mr. Mukherjee said.

However, a few Indian universities appear in the top 50 for certain subjects. The English departments of Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University find places in the top 50 English departments in the QS World University Rankings 2013. Apart from it, IIT Delhi and IIT Bombay also secured positions in the QS Ranking’s top 50 departments of Computer Science and Information Systems.

In the QS Ranking for world’s top universities/institutes, the highest ranked Indian institution is IIT Delhi that stands at the 222nd position. Only eleven Indian institutions, including seven IITs, have earned a rank in the QS list of 700 top universities/institutes of the world.
The president stressed on creating centers of excellence in the NITs.