New Delhi: Addressing the closing session of the Meet of Vice-Chancellors and Directors of Central Universities, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and Indian Institute of Science, President Ram Nath Kovind said on Tuesday that universities should become laboratories for exposing students to the problems that need to be addressed in the cause of nation-building.
The President said that universities and higher educational institutions should play a leading role in addressing the specific challenges faced by our nation and our society. Many of these challenges require creative and innovative solutions. It is their paramount duty to ensure that their campuses emerge as spaces that nurture free expression and ideas, where experimentation is encouraged and failure is not ridiculed but seen as learning.
“In addition, universities should become the laboratories for exposing students to the problems that need to be addressed in the cause of nation-building,” he said.
The President said that students should be encouraged to take up academic and extra-curricular work with a distinct community orientation. He urged universities to make a conscious effort to integrate community-oriented projects as part of their curriculum. He said that University Social Responsibility has to become deeply ingrained into the DNA of our academic community.
