AICTE’s Initiative to Increase Engineering Education’s Employability through Internship: Some Reflections

Abstract

The Planning commission’s 12th year plan 2012-2017 of India, government is looking to skill 500 million people in India by 2022, through its various initiatives. Indian government is planning to make Indian youth more employable by viewing skill building as an instrument to improve the effectiveness and contribution of labour to the overall production. HRD Minister Mr Prakash Javedkar revealed that as per AICTE study only 40 % of engineering students are employable. The government is putting an effort to bring the number from 40 to 60% in next five years. This paper highlights the main concern for educators as how to prepare today’s generation to succeed. It discusses the need to reform education system so future generations can successfully face the tough and rigorous competition in the global market and can join competitive workforce. Today’s global advancement industry demands can be met by preparing the fresh graduates as career ready individuals. To eliminate these gap students should have out of classroom experiences and industry/field exposure along with the professional course curriculum’s theoretical and practical assignments. AICTE plans to introduce summer Internships for 75% of engineering students to make them industry ready, by incorporating internship or field experience programs in the curriculum of Undergraduate Engineering Degree Program to provide the students an insight to the real life field scenarios. Author suggests along with the incorporation and crediting this program, the structured evaluation process for it should be made mandatory to find out the effectiveness in the learning process for students during their field experience.