Internships are direct experiences in a work setting—usually related to career interests. Internships may be paid or unpaid (it largely depends on the field). Some institutions allow their students to receive academic credit for internships. While quantitative data were difficult to find, students do participate in internships between their first and second years and companies do specifically recruit first-year students.
Internships are significantly different from cooperative education programs (co-ops). Internships commitments are typically one semester or summer in length. Co-op programs are structurally integrated with a departmental curriculum such that students alternate between semesters on campus and semesters at work. This typically lengthens a student’s time required to complete a bachelor’s degree from four years to five. Co-op agreements are negotiated between employers and universities guaranteeing co-op positions for students in relevant fields. Students who participate in co-ops are paid during their work terms. Most co-op programs do not begin until a student’s second year of the undergraduate curriculum (i.e., when they have begun classes specifically related to their major).
The remainder of this summary focuses exclusively on internships.
Internships give students the opportunity to apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world projects; explore career options; receive coaching from professionals in the field; and check for a match/mis-match between their personality, preferences, and the organizational environment.
Most of the literature on internships correlates internship participation with positive initial career outcomes, such as more job offers upon graduation and higher starting salaries (Gallup-Purdue, 2016). A study conducted at Mount Holyoke College showed that students who participated in internships were more likely to be employed or enrolled in a graduate program six months after graduation than those who had not participated in internships (Townsley, Lierman, Watermill, & Rousseau, 2017).
The 2015 Gallup-Purdue Report Great Jobs, Great Lives (Gallup-Purdue, 2015) reported that individuals were 1.5 time more likely to agree that their education was worth the cost if they had an internship or job that allowed them to apply what they were learning in the classroom. Participation in internships also made it 1.8 times more likely that individuals were engaged in their work after college.
Experimental studies investigating the impact of specific components of internships were not found. This is most likely due to the heterogeneous nature of internship experiences.
Findings from an exploratory, longitudinal qualitative study that included subjects from four highly-selective liberal arts institutions indicate that critical components of a high-quality internship include participation in authentic tasks, a sense of ownership over a project, opportunity to work independently, and the availability of a mentor or supervisor to provide guidance and feedback. Students who participated in internships with these characteristics described their internships as aiding in their clarification of career goals and in the development of their identity as a professional (Thiry, Laursen, & Hunter, 2016)