President urges IITs to attract students to research programmes

NEW DELHI: Expressing his concern at fewer students opting for post-graduate and Ph.D programmes at the Indian Institutes of Technologies, President Pranab Mukherjee said on Saturday that this trend is not good as the country needs specialized people for its future.

India needs to extend its frontiers of research in technology, science and engineering to fuel its knowledge-based economy, the President said.

Addressing the 44th convocation of IIT Delhi, Mukherjee said, “I understand that very few IIT graduates are pursuing specialized education leading to PhD or higher degrees.

“IITs have so far not been very successful in attracting undergraduate students to post graduate education and research. IIT should devise some strategy to attract under graduate to post graduate programmes.’’

Giving figures, the President said there are only 3,000 Ph.D students at the IITs despite 60,000 students on their rolls.

Similarly, Mukherjee said, only 4,000 students at the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) opted for Ph.Ds as against the total strength of 70,000 students.

“This indicates that bright students are moving away from research and innovation. This does not speak well for our research facilities,’’ the President said.