| |9 JULY 2019HIGHERReviewAn internship allows students to test drive different career options before choosing the right oneuals never get a chance to live up to their true potential. Moreover, India is on the verge of a demographic dividend. Today, approximately half of India's 1.3 bil-lion people are under the age of 26. By 2020, India is forecasted to be the youngest country in the world, with a median age of 29. If utilized well, this can be of a huge advantage to us, as we will have a very high percentage of our population belonging to the work-INDIA IS IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ENGINEERING EDUCATION CRISISing age. For this to happen, it is im-portant that a significant portion of this population is given the hard and soft skills to be able to realize their potential and pursue meaningful ca-reers. However, if we fail to utilize this well, this demographic dividend may turn into a disaster. In a few years time, this trend will reverse and the percentage of non-work-ing population will surpass the working population. This is the generation meant to transform India. If we miss the op-portunity for rapid growth now, it will become a lot more difficult in future. The lack of skills and expo-sure to students is hampering our ability to take advantage of our de-mographic dividend. Therefore, it is imperative for us to rapidly upskill the youth entering the workforce. This problem can be addressed by ­1. Helping students identify what career they want to pursue2. Helping students acquire soft & hard skills necessary for thisInternships offer an elegant solu-tion to make these happen. Intern-ships are short term employment, typically of 2-6 months, provided by companies to students. They are exploratory in nature and generally don't require prior work experi-ence. Internships come in all shapes and sizes, belonging to different profiles in different locations with options to work from home and/or part time. This flexibility is ex-tremely useful for candidates as it allows them to maximize the use of their free time.An internship allows students to test drive different career options before choosing the right one. Giv-en the flexible nature of internships, it is not hard for students to pursue multiple internships while they are still studying. Internships give stu-dents a clear picture into what hard and soft skills are required for a particular profile. They beef up stu-dents' resumes in absence of work experience and students with in-ternships have a significantly higher chance of getting selected for a job. Moreover, students are not required to pay for an internship and in most cases; they also get paid a stipend by the company. Over the last year, there have been several policy changes aim-ing to push the number of students pursuing internships. For example, AICTE has made internships man-datory for students of all engineer-ing colleges in its purview. Con-sidering such policy changes and the gradual increase in popularity of internships among both students and companies, it would not be am-bitious to believe that, in the near future, we would be able to create about 2-3 lakh extra fresher jobs ev-ery year through internships alone. Given that only 2-3 lakh engineer-ing students manage to bag decent jobs every year, internships have the potential to nearly double this num-ber. And the number would only keep growing!It's time we start viewing intern-ships as a serious solution to bridge the industry-academia skill gap. They offer means to a huge number of individuals to lead more satisfy-ing and rewarding careers and help them realize their potential.
< Page 8 | Page 10 >