The Bug That Won’t Disappear: How Joseph Jonathan Fernandis Turned Forty-Seven Courses Into a Second Education

Joseph Jonathan Fernandes In Margao, Goa, Joseph Jonathan Fernandis keeps a diary just for exam dates. Not his own college exams, the other ones. Every semester, when the university releases its list of NPTEL electives eligible for honours credit, he opens the notebook first, checks which subjects might overlap, and starts building a season around …

Higher Ceilings Through a New Platform – Rajdeep Das

Rajdeep Das Working as a Junior Fellow Researcher at the Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata, under the CST, IML and CSB departments, can be quite demanding, especially while pursuing a BTech. Rajdeep Das was one such fellow, and the trajectory of his academic interests deepened and changed when an educator came and introduced him …

Karan Bhalla’s Food for the Brain

Karan Bhalla In the competitive landscape of Indian academia, Assistant Professor Karan Bhalla stands out for his relentless intellectual curiosity. A professor of Chemistry at Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Ludhiana. He treats NPTEL less like a certification platform and more like an ongoing experiment in how much one person can learn. It was 2020, …

“NPTEL Redefined Me”: HS Sureshchandra, Where Age Is (Literally) Just a Number

Sureshchandra H.S. At the exam centre gate, the security guard tried to stop the silver‑haired man in a neatly pressed shirt, assuming he was there to drop off a student. More than half a dozen times, HS Sureshchandra had to produce his hall ticket to prove he was the candidate, not the parent, there to …

The Headline He Couldn’t Put Down: How Dr. K Karthikeyan Turned One Newspaper Story Into Forty Courses

Dr K Kathikeyan Dr. K. Karthikeyan, then the Dean of Examinations at his college in Madurai, was reading The Hindu one August morning when a headline stopped him – a second-year engineering student had completed 15 NPTEL courses. He was in his fifties, already three decades into teaching, and something about a teenager’s 15 certificates …

From Engineer to Innovator: Chaitanya Srivastava’s Journey in Clean-Tech

Chaitanya Srivastava After two decades navigating the evolving landscape of his industry, Chaitanya Jee Srivastava felt a growing unease – a realization that his original degree no longer fully equipped him for the challenges ahead. This feeling sparked a transformative journey: through relentless learning across 19 rigorous NPTEL courses and two specialized certifications, he forged …

The Pandemic Hours: How Baig Mirza Abdullah Transformed Idle Time Into Thirty-Four Certificates

 Baig Mirza Abdullah When the world came to an unprecedented halt, many found themselves adrift in long, empty hours. Yet, for Baig Mirza Abdullah, an administrator at Dr. Nakadar Institute of Knowledge, these “void years” became a canvas for growth. Rather than succumbing to boredom or frustration, Abdullah seized the moment to immerse himself in learning, …

Black Tea and NPTEL: How Bhushan Ambade Never Stopped Being a Student

Dr. Bhushan Ambade At 56, Dr. Ambade is a Civil Engineering faculty member at Government Polytechnic, Nagpur, a motivational speaker, and, by his own reckoning, a student for life. The wall behind him during our conversation tells the story better than any resume could: eleven NPTEL certificates hung in neat rows, with five more waiting …