Decline in industrial growth, coupled with increased intake of students at IITs, is apparently affecting the quality of course curriculum of engineering students. While the number of students has augmented, a slump in industrial growth has taken a toll on the “mandatory” summer internship.
Eight to 10 weeks of summer internship, preferably in the industry, is the most important component for a professional degree like BTech or, for that matter, even an MBBS.
IITs Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai and even Delhi and Kanpur are unable to find internship for students completing third year of the four-year programme. When the new IITs came up at Mandi, Jodhpur, Gandhinagar,
Ropar, Hyderabad, Indore, Bhubaneswar and Patna by mere political declaration, there were huge protests within academic circles.
Eight new IITs opened five years back still lack faculty, infrastructure ultimately leading to students sufferings. The problem has arisen as the ratio between the number of students seeking technical training from government and private institutes have increase while growth of industry remains stagnant.
Sources claimed that some of the major private players offering BTech courses have hijacked the opportunity and in the wake of unstable economic scenario, the industry and private institutes/universities have colluded to offer jobs at a much less manpower cost when compared to the prestigious institutes like IIT degree holders.
As a fallout, Kharagpur-IIT has made the Rsmandatory’ requisites of summer internship in BTech course ‘optional’ by dropping the internship duration from the course curriculum. In a circular to students, the institute has conveyed that summer internship will be a non-credit optional component. An institute of this prestigious chain of engineering college admits around 1,200-1,300 students each year through JEE.
In the last meeting pertaining to the summer internship held at IIT-Kharagpur, the person in-charge of the undergraduate training & programme, Prof SK Baraí, deliberated at length on current scenario of deployment for such training and expressed difficulties to place most of the students in their own departmental areas.
According to the circular, some departments have felt it necessary that such summer training should be meaningful only if they are sent to relevant areas of their own department.
While the crisis prevails over some departmental views on the issue, a few of the HoDs of the institutes have referred back to department/centre for further discussion. “The recommendation of the department will be discussed further in the next meeting and final- recommendation would be placed to the Senate for approval,” said a IIT professor requesting anonymity.
Some institutes, like BITS Pilani, have two internships for each graduating student — an eight to 10-week internship after second year and then a six-month internship after third year.