JOIN USStudents of the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) have started a petition, asking the varsity to revise its internship rules. The petition, on social activist platform Change.org, has gathered more than 1,500 signatures.
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has made internship mandatory for engineering students to get their degrees.
VTU provides one month for students to do their internship, which, they feel, is too inadequate a time frame.
"The students of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) are protesting for a change in the university's rules regarding internship," the petition read.
"The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has made it mandatory for students to do an internship as part of their engineering degree. VTU allows for one month to this end. However, most industry internships are for a minimum period of three months," it further said.
They said the varsity has offered internships in installments as an alternative, but companies offering internship programmes will not accept it.
"No companies allow students to work on and off for 90 days when getting an internship itself is tough," a student said. "Without the requisite training certificates, many approach shady traders to buy them, creating an easy alternative. They pay between Rs 8,000 and Rs 10,000. Such programmes run for just four weeks, which is not enough to learn something and implement it."