India Engineering Institute Bans Foreign Internships to Help Retain Graduates

Despite producing approximately 240,000 engineering graduates every year, institutes of higher education in India graduate less than 1,000 engineering Ph.D.’s annually, because a vast majority of these students enroll in advanced degree programs in the United States or are absorbed by foreign job markets, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“India's Engineering Schools Losing Grads to U.S. Colleges, Jobs,” May 23, 2008).

This is true even at the seven of the country’s most highly-praised technology institutes where only one percent of students earning bachelor of technology degrees choose to pursue master's degrees, and only two percent of master’s degree recipients choose to pursue doctorate degrees.

At the Institute of Technology in Mumbai, 60 percent of the school’s engineering undergraduates choose foreign work or research internships at schools abroad like the University of Southern California or the Georgia Institute of Technology, with the intention of landing a spot in a U.S. graduate school or a position in a company outside India, according to another article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Elite Engineering School in India Bans Foreign Internships,” June 4, 2008).

In an attempt to reverse that trend and to encourage Indian engineers to pursue graduate studies or technical careers in India, the institute in Mumbai will no longer permit its students to partake in foreign research projects or foreign internships beginning in July.

Instead, undergraduate students will be required to work for an Indian research organization or company to earn academic credit for students’ mandatory internships.

“This move should help the students and the country,” said Ashok Misra, director of the Mumbai institute. “We want our students to see the excitement of engineering companies in India. We want our industry to see our exciting students.”

Share this post: email this | del.icio.us | reddit