Salt Lake: Students of private engineering colleges in Bengal need two to three internships or a full semester of industrial training to make them placement-ready in a depressed job market, according to the state's technology university.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, formerly known as the West Bengal University of Technology, has proposed that students be allowed to choose internships in the field of industry they prefer. They will be awarded extra credits for this, a senior official of the university said.

Engineering students were so far required to do a single internship during their course and it was the responsibility of their colleges to find a suitable industry for their training. In industry-starved Bengal, many private colleges fail to give their students even one internship opportunity, making them less employable compared to their counterparts elsewhere.

Most private institutes depend on industries located in other cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi to arrange internships as well as offer placements.

"The university is working on a proposal to allow students to find their own internships because we are told that institutes often place students in industries that do not match their areas of proficiency. This harms their cause when it comes to employment," said vice-chancellor Saikat Maitra.

The primary responsibility of an engineering college, Maitra said, was to produce employable engineers. "The university wants to enhance the period of internship as this would ensure that colleges produce engineers having all the skills to meet the requirements of the companies they join. The proposal is in the preliminary stage."

A new engineering graduate from a private college said his institute had failed to get him an internship. "A few of my batchmates and I found internship opportunities on our own after we realised that our college would not be able to help. But all of us had to move to other cities and finding accommodation for a short duration was a hassle."

Taranjit Singh, managing director of the JIS Group, said the institutes run by his company had decided to provide free accommodation to students going to other cities for internships.