How universities in India have made a joke out of internships?

What does an internship mean?

Internship is a golden opportunity for students to gain industry relevant skills and knowledge by working with industry professionals. A candidate (student or not) is supposed to work with people in an industry, do whatever tasks they give and gain hands-on experience applying theory in practice.

How does this help students?

For students, this is boon in many ways

• Earn while learning: Many internships offer a stipend, which is enough to cover basic costs of students
• Gain relevant experience: Most colleges are basically sophisticated exam centers. They conduct tests and exams systematically and issue degrees. This makes students unemployable degree holders. Through internships, students get practical exposure to industry problems and solutions, rendering them employable.

Internship vs Project

Before internships became popular, students were supposed to do projects in their college. This has become obsolete nowadays for the following reasons.

• Projects can be easily downloaded / AI generated: Students can easily search for projects in platforms like github etc or generate one from scratch using gemini or claude.
• Projects as PhD work: Many college lecturers make students do their PhD work through projects. Many times, they dont even acknowledge the work done by students
• No real experience: Since many projects are “staged” students dont really gain any real experience from it.

The dilemma faced by colleges and universities

The people running colleges and universities know that unemployable students lead to less placements, less placements means low admission, low admission leads to less money. They want money. To increase money, placements are most important. Companies nowadays are insisting more on internships. So, to increase placements, students must do more internships. Now, if students go for internships they will not attend classes. If students dont attend classes, how can colleges justify hefty fees they take from students? So, students must attend classes. If they attend classes, they will become dumb. This is a big dilemma.

The “JUGAAD” solution

In India, “jugaad” is often the first go-to solution. So universities have come up with such a “solution”. Compulsory Internships. Many universities have made it compulsory for students to take up internships of various durations. Ranging from 15 days to 6 months. Most of these have to be done in the semester holidays. So, no problem of attendance. With this, they can project themselves as “future ready” while also justify hefty fees, since they do engage classes.

The problem with this “JUGAAD” internship

The people running these universities are so dumb that they dont understand that internships are “offered” by industries and cannot be “purchased” or “demanded”. So compulsory internship simply means “get a fake certificate from a institute”. Thus, many institutes started issuing internship certificates online / offline charging anywhere from 500 to 50,000 minting handsome money in the process.

The commission racket!!

Since institutes wanted to earn more money, they struck deals with colleges / universities, calling it MOU. The deal was simple. The college or university sends its students to a particular institute. The students pay “internship fees”. Colleges / universities get their commission as per the MOU. So it is a win-win situation for both institutes and colleges/universities

So what?

Students are paying more. Many capable students, who get eligible for stipend based internships are being denied the opportunity simply because the college / university will lose its “share”. Some universities have even come up with their own “portals” to collect money from students.

The solution?

There is no easy solution for this since the rot is too deep. The first thing which must happen is make internships optional and encourage students to take up stipend based internships.