A Student Perspective on KTU Activity Points and Campus Skill Development
In recent years, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU) introduced Activity Points with a very clear intention:
to encourage students to move beyond textbooks and participate in co-curricular and extracurricular activities that build real-world skills.
On paper, this is an excellent concept.
Engineering education is not only about internal exams, lab records, and semester marks. A good engineer is shaped by teamwork, communication, organizing, presenting ideas, building projects, leading people, and solving real problems. These skills are not learned inside a classroom alone. They grow in hackathons, workshops, student clubs, technical fests, and peer-learning communities.
That is exactly why Activity Points exist.
However, a contradiction has slowly appeared in practice.
The Current Situation
KTU currently gives strong recognition and activity points mainly to certificates from IITs, NITs, and certain external approved programs, while many on-campus technical events, workshops, and student-organized initiatives are not awarded points or are given very limited recognition.
This creates an unintended message:
A one-day online workshop from a distant institute may count more than months of real technical contribution inside your own college.
Students quickly adapt to incentives.
And incentives shape behavior.
Instead of organizing or participating in meaningful campus events, students now prefer to collect certificates.
The result is visible across campuses.
What Actually Builds Skills?
Skill development does not happen by attending a webinar passively.
It happens through doing.
Consider what students learn while organizing a college technical event:
- Planning and project management
- Technical setup and troubleshooting
- Sponsorship and communication with companies
- Public speaking and presentations
- Team leadership
- Documentation and reporting
- Marketing and outreach
- Handling unexpected failures
No online certificate can replicate this experience.
In fact, organizing a cybersecurity workshop, a coding bootcamp, a robotics session, or a CTF competition teaches more engineering professionalism than many formal courses.
Students are not just learners in these events.
They become creators.
The Unintended Consequence: Death of Campus Societies
Because Activity Points are tied to graduation requirements, students naturally choose the safest path to collect them.
So participation patterns change:
Before:
Students joined clubs → organized workshops → mentored juniors → built communities.
Now:
Students register for external certificate programs → download certificate → upload → finish requirement.
The impact is serious:
- Technical clubs become inactive
- Workshops get fewer participants
- Student leadership opportunities disappear
- Peer learning stops
- Juniors lose mentorship
Over time, campus technical culture weakens.
Ironically, a system created to promote activity is slowly reducing actual activity.
The Forgery Argument
One common reason cited for strict approval is certificate authenticity.
Yes, verification is important. Fake certificates do exist.
But this argument has a limitation.
If forgery is the concern, it applies equally to any certificate, including external ones. Even certificates from reputed institutions can be forged digitally today. Verification should therefore be a process problem, not a recognition problem.
Instead of ignoring campus activities, universities can:
- verify through faculty coordinators
- require event documentation
- check participation lists
- require reports or portfolios
- maintain college-verified activity logs
Campus events are actually easier to verify than external programs, because they occur under faculty supervision.
What the Activity Point System Was Supposed to Do
The goal of activity points was not certificate collection.
The goal was skill development.
Engineering graduates are often criticized for lacking practical exposure, communication ability, and teamwork experience. Student societies and technical communities directly solve this issue. They are training grounds for leadership and innovation.
When recognition shifts away from campus contribution, students stop investing time in building communities. The ecosystem weakens, and future students lose opportunities.
A Better Approach
Instead of restricting recognition, the university could strengthen the system:
- Recognize verified campus workshops and technical clubs
- Provide structured approval through faculty coordinators
- Accept event organizing and mentoring as high-value activities
- Encourage peer teaching and student innovation
- Introduce documentation-based evaluation rather than certificate-only evaluation
A student who conducts a workshop arguably learns more than a student who attends one.
The system should reward contribution, not just participation.
Conclusion
KTU’s Activity Point system was introduced with a positive vision:
to produce capable, industry-ready engineers.
But policy implementation matters.
When recognition is limited only to external certificates, the message unintentionally becomes:
Learning is validated by a document, not by effort.
Engineering education should not become a certificate collection exercise.
Real learning often happens in small seminar halls, late-night preparation meetings, debugging sessions before events, and students teaching other students. These experiences build confidence, responsibility, and technical maturity.
If campus initiatives are not encouraged, student communities slowly disappear.
And when communities disappear, skill development disappears with them.
The university does not need to remove verification.
It needs to expand recognition.
Because the strongest engineers are not just those who attended events.
They are the ones who built them.
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