Internships and projects: policy, practices, and prognosis

Abstract

Industry-facing curricula in higher education have been the cornerstone of academic discourse for the last two decades. The focus of the discourse has been centred on the actual need for students’ immersive industry experience in the form of internships and project credits. Higher Education Institutions must converge with industrial demand to bridge the gap and prepare their students. The primary objective is to examine perspectives on institutional policy, practice, and prognosis in institutions through the views of various stakeholders with specific reference to internships, industry experience, and project credits. The second objective is to assess how these perspectives align with the NEP-2020 recommendations. A mixed-methods approach has been employed to conduct the study. The student interaction was conducted to gauge the perceived facilitation and effectiveness of the industry experience. The sample for this interaction included final-year undergraduate students. Interviews with institutional administrators and industrial professionals were conducted to get in-depth insight into the belief systems and processes of industrial experiences. The key findings include a positive outlook towards the prospective changes to the curriculum as per the demand of the industry, a favourable prognosis of the impact of internships and project credits on employment opportunities from student and industry professionals’ perspectives, and a focused outlay for industry-ready graduates to bridge the skills gap. However, there are hurdles like lack of relevant curricula, resources, skill sets, the timing of the internships, remuneration, and fewer relevant training programmes in the institutes that need to be crossed for the complete convergence of the two sectors through internships and projects.