This article has been published in partnership with Vibha.
For a student pursuing a diploma, an internship can be the bridge between what they learn in a classroom and what they will eventually do at work. But finding the right opportunity is not always straightforward.
Nikhil Kumar, a 21-year-old B.Tech CSE student from Punjab, had come across internships that required candidates to hold a bachelor’s degree or pay fees to gain experience. After completing his diploma in 2025, he chose to pursue a bachelor’s degree. The experience made him think about the barriers other diploma students might face.
At Government Polytechnic College, Talwara, Nikhil was already putting his coding skills to use. Alongside his faculty mentor, Sukeeratpal Singh, he was developing a college management system to simplify administrative work.
When Vibha’s Programme Management Unit (PMU) learnt about the project, it saw an opportunity to build on it. The team was working on a semester-long internship programme in which students would spend their final semester working in industry rather than attending regular theory classes. Together, they adapted the system to help colleges monitor students’ progress throughout this practical training.
Sukeeratpal Singh and the Vibha PMU team helped Nikhil develop Place Intern to track students’ internship progress. Photograph: (AI generated using reference)
The project became Place Intern, a portal that brings student internship records, faculty visits and progress reports together.
“I was also curious whether whatever I was building would be used in the real world,” Nikhil says.
The project gave him the chance to find out. With guidance from his faculty mentor, Sukeeratpal Singh, and support from Vibha’s (PMU), which works with Punjab’s technical education department, Nikhil helped develop his college’s internship management system into a tool that could be used by other institutions.
How a college project found a purpose beyond campus
At Government Polytechnic College, Talwara, Singh had been encouraging students to explore technology beyond their regular coursework. In 2023, he started a student club where interested students could spend additional time learning, experimenting, and helping one another.
Nikhil stood out for his willingness to take on work independently. “He was always the one who finished the work first,” Singh recalls.
The two began working on a college management system that could make certain administrative processes easier to handle. They planned its features, decided how it would work and tested it over several weeks.
The project caught the attention of Vibha’s PMU when team member Abhay Vashisht visited the college. The team was working on the policy and programme design for a semester-long internship initiative for students in technical education.
As they considered how the programme would work on the ground, they began identifying possible implementation challenges, including how colleges could monitor students throughout their internships.
Nikhil’s understanding of the college environment, combined with the PMU’s inputs on the internship programme, helped shape the portal into a tool that could support its implementation.
Nikhil built the parts that store and manage information, tested the portal, put it online and kept it running. Singh helped him understand the college workflows the system needed to support, while the PMU team shared the programme requirements, developed an initial outline for the portal and worked closely with him to refine its design through testing and feedback.
Place Intern brings student progress reports, faculty visits and internship records onto one platform, reducing dependence on separate spreadsheets and paper-based submissions.
Building the portal also meant learning how to work with the people who would use it. Nikhil showed faculty members how to use it, wrote instructions and made changes based on their feedback. He had to think about how different people would use the system and what information they needed to access.
Place Intern currently helps colleges track students undertaking internships during their final semester, when they work in industry in place of regular theory classes.
It does not serve as a placement portal that matches students with employers or guarantees them internships. Its four types of users each see the information they need. Faculty members can record monthly visits to students at their internship workplaces, while students submit reports on their progress. The principal closely monitors the tasks faculty and students undertake, while the Directorate in Chandigarh uses dashboard access to track progress and review updates.
“By bringing these records together, the portal reduces dependence on separate spreadsheets and paper-based submissions,” adds Nikhil.
Building the portal taught Nikhil how to create something people could actually use, and how working closely with those using it could help make it better.
‘Students need to apply their classroom knowledge’
For students like Nikhil, finding an internship is one part of a larger challenge: turning a technical qualification into the skills and confidence needed to enter the workforce.
Mridul Dhyani, who works with Vibha’s PMU in Punjab, says diploma programmes have faced challenges around industry acceptance, student retention and employability.
“Students may understand technical concepts in the classroom, but they also need opportunities to apply that knowledge and become familiar with workplace expectations,” he shares.
For students in rural areas, finding these opportunities can be especially difficult. Colleges may have fewer employers nearby, and students may not have family or professional networks that can connect them to industries.
Sukeeratpal has seen these challenges through his work in teaching and placements. Earlier, students often had to approach companies and establish industry connections themselves. Colleges also lacked a consistent way to track internships and follow students’ progress.
Faculty members can use Place Intern to record monthly visits to students at their internship workplaces and track their progress during practical training.
“Earlier it was in the minds of the children that a diploma is enough,” Sukeeratpal says. “Now our priority has become to make the students job-ready.”
Addressing these gaps means helping students find openings while also introducing structured internships, strengthening industry engagement, updating curricula and developing the communication and practical skills they need at work.
Place Intern helps colleges keep track of students during their internships. Finding an internship is the first step, but colleges also need to know how students are progressing, whether their training is going as planned and if they are gaining useful experience. The portal is part of a larger effort to help students build the skills they need for employment.
Taking a student-built portal beyond the classroom
The wider effort is supported by Vibha, which works towards ensuring high-quality public education for every child. Its mission is to improve learning levels in government schools by identifying, supporting and scaling proven solutions.
It works with governments, implementation partners, educators and communities to strengthen different parts of the education system, including early reading and maths, teacher training, classroom materials, technology, record-keeping and tracking progress.
In Punjab, the work focuses on technical education. “The underlying approach is similar: understand where the system is falling short, work with government teams and institutions to address those gaps, and support solutions that can become part of regular practice,” adds Mridul.
The Programme Management Unit (PMU) helps put this approach into practice. Working alongside government departments and educational institutions, it listens to people at colleges, identifies what needs attention, helps develop solutions and sees them put to use.
For Place Intern, the PMU saw how the college’s existing technology project could help manage semester-long internships. The team worked with Nikhil and Singh to understand what colleges needed, adapt the portal accordingly, and test and improve it for everyday use.
Through its PMU, Vibha works with Punjab’s technical education department and polytechnic colleges to bridge the gap between education and employment.
The aim is to make sure the tool works for the people who will depend on it. Faculty members, college leaders and department officials need to understand how it fits into their responsibilities, while students need a clear process for submitting reports and being monitored during their internships.
“We just don’t work towards plans,” Dhyani says. “Our work starts with a plan, but it doesn’t stop till we complete the loop.”
That follow-through matters when a solution is expected to last beyond its development. Training, feedback and institutional ownership can determine whether a new system becomes part of everyday practice or remains a one-off project.
How a 2-week maths course became part of a bigger effort
Alongside efforts to help students find internships, the wider initiative has also focused on making classroom learning more relevant to their needs. Across 91 government polytechnic colleges in Punjab, the wider initiative has reached 5,921 students in FY 2026, with semester internships introduced in six courses.
These numbers reflect the initiative’s combined work across several interventions, not Place Intern alone.
Some of the changes began with a simple question: what were students struggling with in the classroom?
When mathematics emerged as a challenge, the team introduced a two-week bridge course to help students strengthen their basics. According to Dhyani, the results showed up the following year, when the proportion of students passing the subject rose from 16% to 31%.
A two-week mathematics bridge course helped address gaps in students’ foundational learning, with the reported pass rate rising from 16% to 31%.
English classes saw a change, too. Instead of placing most of the emphasis on literature and grammar, the revised curriculum focused more on functional English and everyday conversations. The reported pass rate rose from 45% to 92%. Dhyani recalls that some teachers were initially hesitant about the shift, but later noticed that students were participating more actively in class.
The programme also includes faculty training, entrepreneurship education and efforts to build stronger industry links. Each intervention addresses a different gap, but the approach remains the same: understand the problem, involve the people affected and find a solution that works within the existing system.
Singh has also seen how easily industry relationships can fall apart when they depend on a single staff member who later moves on. By keeping in touch with employers and sharing responsibility across staff, colleges can make these partnerships last and give students more reliable workplace opportunities.
The next step: bringing colleges and employers together
Place Intern has begun supporting the tracking of semester internships at the college level. Profiles for the first batch of more than 1,500 students have been uploaded, with profiles for a further batch of over 1,700 also being prepared. These figures indicate students being recorded for tracking, not that all have secured internships through the portal.
The longer-term ambition is to make it easier for colleges and employers to connect. A planned statewide platform is intended to help industries share their requirements and allow institutions to identify relevant opportunities for students across polytechnics, industrial training institutes and degree colleges.
For Nikhil, developing Place Intern has offered a different kind of practical learning. He has had to understand how people use technology, respond to feedback and keep a system functioning beyond its initial development.
Beyond internship tracking, the wider initiative is working to improve functional English, strengthen industry connections and help students develop practical skills for the workplace.
Singh sees the project as a reason to give students more room to experiment, with faculty members providing the guidance needed to turn an idea into something useful.
The next test is whether these systems can become part of everyday institutional practice, making it easier to monitor internships and build stronger links between education and employment.
Nikhil’s experience began with developing a college management system, but working with the PMU gave the project a wider purpose.
For Nikhil, the experience has meant building his own skills while working on a tool that could make the path from education to employment easier for students who follow.
All images courtesy of Vibha team
