BENGALURU: Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) Belagavi has made internship of eight weeks mandatory for undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students in affiliated colleges.
The concept which was in discussion since several years at the VTU got approval from the Board of Studies (BOS) recently, and it will be implemented from the current academic year.
Confirming this to Express, Vice-Chancellor of VTU Dr Karisiddappa, said, “Attending mandatory internships will give students practical knowledge about the industry and the course/stream they are pursuing. As it is approved in the BOS, we will soon issue official notification and communicate the same to affiliated colleges.”
However, this mandatory internship will not facilitate certification, instead university will give marks. “It is a general perception that internship means getting experience certificate, but here we are restricting it to gain marks. We are fixing some marks for the internship, where the performance of the candidate at that particular company will be evaluated by external and internal evaluators,” explained Karisiddappa.
As decided by the BOS, the internship for undergraduate (BE) students will be in seventh semester and for the postgraduate students (M.Tech) it will be in third semester.
Meanwhile, the students need not have to struggle to get internship opportunities, as the university itself will organise the same. For this purpose, the university is associating with placement cells of private colleges. “If we insist students to find internships it would be difficult for them, so we have decided to identify companies for them and for this we will take the help of the placement cells of various engineering colleges,” mentioned the V-C.
According to university officials, if students perform well during internships they may get jobs easily.