New Delhi — In a move to retain engineering talent in India, one of the country’s premier engineering schools has barred its undergraduates from doing research and internships abroad, the Business Standard newspaper reports.

Starting in July, undergraduates at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai must work for an Indian company or research institution as part of their mandatory internship if they want to earn academic credit.

“This move should help the students and the country,” Ashok Misra, director of the Mumbai institute, was quoted as saying. “We want our students to see the excitement of engineering companies in India. We want our industry to see our exciting students.”

More than 60 percent of undergraduates at the institute opt for foreign research and work internships — at places like the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Southern California — in hopes of smoothing the path to admission at graduate programs abroad or to jobs with foreign companies.

Some students were angered by the new restriction.

“This move will hamper the chances of students who wish to go abroad for a Ph.D. or higher studies,” one student, Ankit Agarwal, was quoted as saying.

A recent report by a professor at the institute in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, said India graduates fewer than 1,000 Ph.D.’s in engineering annually, despite producing some 240,000 basic engineering graduates every year. Most of those with bachelor’s degrees enter the job market or move to the United States for graduate education, according to the report. —Shailaja Neelakantan