New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee Monday said that leading educational institutions must approach the university ratings process in a more pro-active manner.

Speaking at the annual convocation of Jamia Millia Islamia, here, Mukherjee lamented the fact that with 723 universities and over 37,000 colleges in the country, not one featured in the top 200 universities of the world.

He asked institutions to ramp up physical infrastructure, fill up vacant faculty positions, attract talent from abroad, review curriculum to make it inter-disciplinary and industry-oriented, and promote centres of excellence.

Jamia Millia Islamia awarded a total of 4503 degrees and diplomas to students who successfully completed courses from different faculties of the 94-year-old university in the 2012-13 academic session. The university also awarded 162 gold medals to toppers of different courses and awarded 223 Ph.D. degrees to research scholars.

“This is your moment of glory, it is also an occasion to ponder over your priorities in life. As bright young minds you must help mitigate the problems afflicting us, especially issues like potable drinking water, sanitation, infrastructure, health, crime and gender bias,” Mukherjee added.

Education enhances lives, forwards thinking and enhances the capacity to believe, he said, asking students to make education useful by making themselves useful to society.

Quoting the father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, the President said: “The season of failure is the best time to sow the seeds of success.”

Earlier, addressing students, Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Irani, who was the guest of honour, said she was confident that with the current crop of students, the Jamia legacy would prosper forever. She said that the message should go out that the students of Jamia are ready to make history.

Sporting a bandaged right arm, Irani inaugurated a new Centre for Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Science on the Jamia campus after the convocation ceremony. She ignored questions from journalists about the scrapping of German language programmes from government schools and replacing them with Sanskrit.

Later, speaking to journalists, Vice-Chancellor Talat Ahmad said that students should have the freedom to choose languages that they feel are relevant to their future.