Now, Internship Shops Open!
We know the capacity of market forces to rise to the occasion and cash in on emerging trends, and they do not spare academics either. The DTP industry, which has long minted money by offering customised undergraduate and postgraduate projects, proved early on that the market is always alert to opportunities opened up by academia. The same vigour was (and still is) displayed by firms offering what is euphemistically termed consultancy, ostensibly to help educational institutions ace accreditation. Now, to that list, we may add Internship Shops, as the FYUGP has made internships mandatory. These shops are already opening in Kerala. A recent example of the academisation of internships involved a group of students from an Arts and Science college spending a couple of days in a Management Institute attending soft-skills sessions. Interestingly, this short period of activity-oriented classroom training was labelled an internship, I later learned. Basic communication skills, presentatio...