Universities not degree factories: President

HYDERABAD: President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday said that the best scientific universities and institutions of learning are not just teaching shops or degree factories but increasingly they are sources of innovation and incubators of technology and technology-driven start-ups.

He was speaking at the seventh convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad at Kandi in Sangareddy district near here.

“The knowledge ecosystem of public investments in science, academic institutions and universities, research laboratories, commercial applications and private enterprise has an almost magical potential. Its best example is, of course, Silicon Valley in the US. At the core of Silicon Valley are basic science and technology campuses and their talented faculty and students,” he said.

The President advised IIT Hyderabad to remain relevant to the fourth industrial revolution that he said will write the script of the 21st century.

He said that as a second generation IIT, it should borrow from as well as learn from the models of the past.

Kovind was happy to note that IIT Hyderabad had made a start by setting up a network of centres for research and promotion of entrepreneurship.

The President noted that in Hyderabad there were as many as 19 research facilities and laboratories of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Biotechnology, the Department of Atomic Energy, the Defence Research and Development Organization and the Indian Space Research Organization.