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Elite Engineering School in India Bans Foreign Internships
By
Shailaja Neelakantan/NEW DELHI
Issue
cover-dated June 4, 2008
In a move to retain engineering talent
in India, one of the country’s premier engineering schools has
barred its undergraduates from doing research and internships
abroad, the Business Standard newspaper reports.
Starting in July, undergraduates at
the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai must work for an
Indian company or research institution as part of their mandatory
internship if they want to earn academic credit.
“This move should help the students
and the country,” Ashok Misra, director of the Mumbai institute,
was quoted as saying. “We want our students to see the excitement
of engineering companies in India. We want our industry to see
our exciting students.”
More than 60 percent of undergraduates
at the institute opt for foreign research and work internships
— at places like the Georgia Institute of Technology and the
University of Southern California — in hopes of smoothing the
path to admission at graduate programs abroad or to jobs with
foreign companies.
Some students were angered by the
new restriction. “This move will hamper the chances of students
who wish to go abroad for a Ph.D. or higher studies,” one student,
Ankit Agarwal, was quoted as saying.
A recent report by a professor at the
institute in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, said India graduates fewer
than 1,000 Ph.D.’s in engineering annually, despite producing
some 240,000 basic engineering graduates every year. Most of
those with bachelor’s degrees enter the job market or move to
the United States for graduate education, according to the report.
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