2.1 Internships
2.1.1 Overview of Internship, its Aims, Processes, and Organisation
I describe the definitions, aims, processes, and organisation of internships. The next section moves on to the definitions of the internship. ILO (2016) highlights that students who have worked for the organisation are expected to fill 37% of graduate job vacancies. An internship allows students to work for a particular employer on a full-time basis, where they earn experience and gain basic knowledge in their selected fields of study. Interns can gain experience in graduate employment for at least one year (Billett, 2010; Tomlinson, 2017). Students build career
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opportunities and negotiate contracts with other interns and key figures within the organisation and with customers. The people they come to know on undergraduate internships can be influential contacts when they seek for graduate jobs and job references. Undergraduate and graduate students who undertake internships, consider joining an enterprise to gain a wealth of relevant work experience (Employability and Career Forum Employability, 2017).
2.1.1.1 What is an Internship?
An internship is a choice for graduates to take part in a planned and supervised work experience conducted by professionals in their fields with a career-oriented goal (Puthucheary, 2017). The internship offers short-term, temporary work which lasts for a few weeks or up to twelve months (General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 2017). Many employers offer internships of six to twelve months on a sandwich basis to graduates. According to Smith (2017), internship for students may be paid or unpaid. However, employers prefer to recruit an employee who has undertaken a paid internship for at least twelve months. Graduates can complete one internship or multiple internships with the same or different employers. An internship may be compulsory or not for many students; this may depend on the curricula of the particular many universities. The duration of internships equals the time taken by graduates to gain experience in the workplace (Montague et al. 2018). Internships contribute to the students’ personal and professional development through work assignments (Office of learning and teaching project, 2018). Students complete this training and development before they graduate from the university even though, sometimes, they continue and end their internships after graduation. During their internships, students practise what they have learned in their field of studies in classrooms, under supervising professionals and other employees (Rothwell and Rothwell, 2017) assert that internships allow graduates to gain valuable experience that may help them secure future employment, the skills being in demand by employers. I discuss the aims of internships below.
2.1.1.2 Aims of Internship
In this section, I describe the aims or goals of internships. In an analysis of internships, Clarke (2017) reports that an internship is an opportunity for students from colleges or universities to work at an undergraduate education level to gain on-site experiences. Undergraduates put into practise their academic theoretical knowledge in the work environment (Jackson, 2015; Yorke, 2006). They access professional positions, meeting professionals in their career choice and concerns (World Bank, 2015a; MOLISA, 2018). Much research has found that internships are an ideal “win-win” situation for all stakeholders involved, such as, academics/lecturers,
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graduates, and employers who enjoy these experiences (Dhakal et al., 2018). The stakeholders feel that they have reached their objectives when internships are deemed satisfactory.
2.1.1.3 Employability Skills as an Aspect of Learning within Internship
During their internships, graduates learn the essential employability skills needed by employers under supervising professionals from industries (Burgess et al., 2018). Much of the published writings on internships pay particular attention to the contributions of internships to the students' personal and professional training and development (Prikshat et al., 2018). Besides, HEIs consider compulsory internships as mechanisms that provide the interns with more information about the expectations of the labour market of graduate skills (Tsukamoto, 2016). Internships also allow universities to devise study programmes (WEF, 2017).
Employability skills are an important aspect of learning during an internship. A key purpose of an internship is to provide students with the comprehensive skill set desired by potential employers. Some of these being, professionalism, honesty and integrity, adaptability, problem- solving, reliability, self-confidence, and leadership skills.
2.1.1.4 Organisation of internship
The following section describes how various stakeholders organise internships.
Academics/lecturers organise internship in collaboration with employers to expose graduates to the world of work. In a recent study (World Bank, 2017), academics/lecturers organised internships for graduates and postgraduates by exposing them to specially designed and supervised work in a workplace environment. Mentors (supervisors/experienced workers from industries) gave training to graduates in professional subjects, recommending that supervising support and instructions be supplied to the graduate interns in the workplace (Sin & Neave, 2016). Supervisors involve graduates in work but can also consider job shadowing as a part of the training. Students’ internships may not be associated with a specific occupation, but when internships are compulsory, students complete the same before continuing to professional employment (Jackson, 2015). Related internships, such as in the legal and medical professions, end with an examination which students must pass before their first employment in the profession (Choo, 2017). The shortest duration of the practical work experience is one year.
Interns receive an allowance at lower rates with a work contract or in the form of volunteer work or they are unpaid (Tanaka, 2015). Internship opportunities can vary across the university and may form part of the curriculum or be optional (Finn, 2016). Students may earn academic credits,
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however, sometimes, there is no credit linked to this experience (Business Council of Australia, 2017). Besides, internships may be full-time or part-time as a “one-off” training or may be scheduled for three consecutive years, in which students accomplish various programme levels of training per year (Social Research Centre, 2018). The duration of these internships may be for two weeks, or up to twelve months (Tanaka, 2015) as decided jointly by academics and employers.
In preparing the student for an internship, many responsibilities come into play and the first is that of the academics overseeing the internship process. Also, there is a need for academics to comply with the content of the curriculum to provide disciplinary knowledge, how the student is introduced and assimilated into a new work environment has the potential to influence the effectiveness of their learning, therefore a carefully designed and supported transition from higher education to the workplace by academics help produce an effective learning environment.
Academic facilitators (staff) must provide academic and professional essentials at the outset of the transition, provide support throughout the students’ placement and keep in regular contact with them (Tomlinson, 2017).
Existing literature reveals unfavourable results for internships, supporting the demand for further research (Schwab, 2016). Researchers refer, for example, to graduates who have followed no internship programme and yet have done very well in the enterprise, raising doubt about the need for a compulsory internship. A similar situation affects the nature of compulsory internship in employment rates. The imposed responsibility defeats the natural motivation of graduates (Tsukamoto, 2016). It may also increase negative feelings linked to the learning experience.
Former studies relate compulsory internships to graduate employment rates because the collaboration between HEIs and employers is missing. Many types of research assume that stronger links between HEIs and employers improve internship and can become a mechanism for employers to be more involved in curricular development (Tsukamoto, 2016; Jackson, 2015).