In a world that thrives on innovation, you'd expect colleges — especially in engineering and tech — to foster creativity, experimentation, and hands-on learning.
But in many places today, the exact opposite is happening.
Instead of letting students build their own projects, some institutions are forcing them to pay for ready-made solutions — often from third-party companies. What's worse? These same institutions sometimes push students to publish research papers in low-quality journals… that the students didn’t even write.
Let’s talk about it.
🎯 The Problem: Projects Without Participation
Final-year projects should be the time when students explore something they’re curious about — maybe an IoT-based solution for farmers, a mobile app for mental health, or a machine learning model for predicting traffic.
But here’s the reality in many colleges:
Projects are pre-approved templates from a "vendor list"
Students pay for complete source code, documentation, and even presentation slides
No real coding, debugging, or research takes place
“Research papers” are published in bulk — often copy-pasted or barely relevant
It’s not just about skipping hard work — in many cases, students are not allowed to build something of their own. Their ideas are discouraged, and they’re told to “just choose something and get it done.”
🧠What’s Being Lost
As a developer or aspiring engineer, your strength lies in building and solving problems. But this system takes away:
đźš« Skill Development: No hands-on experience with frameworks, APIs, databases, etc.
🤯 Critical Thinking: No real design decisions, debugging, or feature iteration
📉 Credibility: Students can't explain the logic behind the code they “submitted”
🔍 Portfolio: Nothing to showcase on GitHub, resumes, or interviews
Imagine facing your first tech interview and being asked: “Tell me about a project you've built.”
If your answer is based on code you’ve never written or understood… that’s a red flag.
đź’° The Business of Education?
Let’s not ignore the big picture. Why is this happening?
Colleges want a high number of “project completions” and “research publications” to meet criteria from accreditation boards (like NAAC/NBA).
Faculty often lack time or up-to-date technical skills to guide student innovation.
Third-party vendors see this as a business opportunity, offering “custom” projects in exchange for ₹5,000–₹50,000.
Students, afraid of failure or lower grades, feel forced to take the shortcut.
But what’s being sacrificed? Real learning. Career readiness. Confidence.
🚀 What Needs to Change
We need a mindset shift — from both institutions and students.
For Colleges:
Encourage original, self-made projects — even if they’re incomplete or imperfect.
Set up mentorship support for coding, design, documentation, and research.
Stop chasing vanity metrics like “number of publications” without substance.
Value learning outcomes over flashy presentations or marks.
For Students:
Stand up for your ideas. Build what you’re curious about.
Document your process, push your code to GitHub, and make something you understand.
Don’t fear failure — projects are about learning, not just submitting.
Seek help from online communities (like dev.to, GitHub, Stack Overflow) if local support is lacking.
🛠️ Build Something — Even If It Breaks
Here’s the truth:
A small project you built with bugs and limitations is worth more than a polished one you didn’t understand.
It shows that you tried. That you learned. That you own your growth.
So if you're in college and you're being told to "just buy a project" — push back.
If you’re a mentor or faculty — give students space to fail and learn.
And if you're part of the system — change it from within.
🌱 Learning is about effort. Engineering is about building.
Let’s stop outsourcing the very thing that defines us.
If this resonates with you, feel free to comment or share your own story. Have you been in a system like this? Let’s talk 👇
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