HYDERABAD: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has said that universities have an important role in creating and nurturing a "global human resources cadre" which is essential for transforming the country into a knowledge society.

Delivering the 77th convocation address at Osmania University on Thursday, he urged varsities to create two cadres -- a "global cadre" of skilled youth with specific knowledge of special skills and another with higher education -- for powering the manufacturing and services sectors.

Talent pool

Nearly 10 million youth enter the employment market every year. In the 21st century, the country needs a large number of talented youth with higher education for knowledge acquisition, creation and sharing. It now has 540 million youths below 25 and the number will grow till 2050. Keeping this in mind, universities should create the two cadres. He wanted universities and secondary education system to increase the `throughput' of the higher education system from the existing 11 per cent to 20 per cent by 2015, 30 per cent by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2040.

Osmania University Vice-Chancellor Mohd. Suleman Siddiqi, mentioning the new courses, said the varsity took the initiative to conceptualise and concretise industry-institution interface through the establishment of a hub on the campus. It was keen to join the Pan-African-e-network project for providing tele-educational services to 53 member countries of the African Union. It had submitted an expression of interest to Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd, which was implementing it on behalf of the External Affairs Ministry.

He said the Government had sanctioned 298 faculty positions and the process of recruitment was on. Earlier, Dr. Kalam, Governor Rameshwar Thakur and Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy came to the venue in a procession wearing the customary robes. Several students were awarded Ph.D degrees.

Before delivering the address, Dr. Kalam administered a seven-point oath to students underlining the importance of hard work, righteousness, honesty and working for the mission of developed India by 2020.

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