What a brilliant idea!

The final year of engineering requires students to undertake a project work. Three days in a week are allotted to the project work chosen by the students. 

The students can either come up with their own ideas or pick it off the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) archive.

The IEEE is a non profit organisation that publishes scientific journals among other things.

Students are supposed to do the implementation on their own. They are assisted by an internal guide who oversees the project. If the project is done in a company, then they also have an external guide overseeing the project.

A series of presentations and a final project demo decides the fate of the students.
The idea of a project is to give the students confidence to face the industry. However, considering, the importance of marks and deadline pressure, students have started buying their final year project.

The hunt for the project begins mid seventh semester and projects are bought at exorbitant prices, depending on the complexity of the scheme required.

Kritika Sharma, a final year, information science student from MSRIT says that it is a common practice and many of her classmates do it.

“There are software professionals who help you with projects. They cost anywhere between Rs 25,000 and Rs 30,000 and since a project is done by at least three to four people, each pools in Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 which is considered reasonable. The
person designing the project conducts sessions where everything about the code used in programming and the implementation of the project is taught,” she adds.

Most students buy these projects because the help they get from the colleges is insufficient.

Gunjan Jain, software professional says, “Our college forced us to pick only IEEE
papers and even after implementing the project on our own they were not happy with it.

The teachers didn't bother to help us but in turn scared us saying that we were going to flunk the external exams. We had to buy a project in the last minute! The company
we approached taught us everything.”

A project vendor talking about his services says, “We provide the entire hardware, which the students return after the demo in college. The project is systematically divided into different phases with three to six hours of sessions after each phase. Students are also provided help with documentation and undergo a mock viva to prepare for the externals. If the students are confused about what to do for their final year project, we have over 2000 topics. They can choose from our list.” 

This practice that has been prevalent for a couple of years now, says Meenakshi Upadhya, a design engineer, “Just like how seniors pass around xeroxed notes to the juniors, the phone numbers of the most reliable guys in the project-making business are passed around. It is an open secret that most engineering students buy projects.”