It doesn't hurt to look back at the very definition of post-school education and the expectations from a university. A university needs to be a place where knowledge is transferred and disseminated with a liberal spirit of a combined team of faculty and students. New knowledge is always created through research and innovations. But it's quite unfortunate that, barring a few higher education institutions, most universities in the country only induct postgraduate students, while undergraduate students are forced to opt for affiliated or autonomous colleges.

The story of affiliated and autonomous colleges is quite different. While postgraduate students themselves hardly get to do hardcore research, undergraduate students can only dream of such luxuries. The result? Despite the flaring number of universities and colleges sprouting every year, the quality of research and innovation that could contribute at the enterprise level needs to be improved.

Anna University, over the decades, has been striving to break away and has been quite successful in doing so by exerting a great amount of focus on research. To promote research activities and create an ecosystem for development, Anna University has recently set up 11 centers of excellence on its campus at the cost of Rs 25 lakh each. This includes centers for wireless system design, fundamental research, artificial intelligence, data science research and applications, cyber security, energy storage technologies, e-vehicle technologies, excellence in automobile technology, Internet of Things (IoT), liberal arts for science engineering and technology, multi-disciplinary systems research and robotics and automation. It’s no wonder the university continues to produce global leaders across all walks of life.