JNTU-Hyderabad gives academic flexibility to students

Starting this academic year, students can complete their elective courses a semester earlier, enabling them to completely focus on their internships in their final year

Hyderabad: The Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) – Hyderabad students will no longer have to juggle between labs, lectures, and internships in their final year of course work.

Starting this academic year, students can complete their elective courses a semester earlier, enabling them to completely focus on their internships and projects in their final year.

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This new provision is part of the regulations 2025 (R-25) which will be implemented from the academic year 2025-26. Under the new rules, the undergraduate engineering students can finish two fourth-year electives in their third year, enabling them to focus purely on hands-on internships in the industry and major projects.

These electives can be taken up either through the Massive Open Online Courses or offline in the department concerned or other departments. However, such students must have completed the pre-requisite course before taking up an elective of the final year engineering programme.

“Students are supposed to complete six electives in an engineering programme. Starting this academic year, we have given the flexibility to students to complete their last two electives in the third year itself. This will enable students to focus completely on the internships and projects. Moreover, the companies and industries want students to take up a minimum of six months of internship before joining the job,” a senior JNTU-Hyderabad official said.

Students joining BTech programmes from 2025-26 are allowed to drop four credits. Out of 164 credits, students can drop four credits and still earn an engineering degree. However, such students must meet attendance criteria and other academic parameters to be eligible to drop credits.

Further, to skill students as per the industry requirements, the University launched four one credit courses in the second and third years of engineering. Students can opt for these courses either three domain-specific and one interdisciplinary course or two each domain-specific and interdisciplinary courses.

Four courses – Indian Knowledge System and Environmental Science, Gender Sensitization, and Constitution of India – totalling three credits have been made mandatory for all university engineering students.