2.5 Students’ Discourses around Internship and Employability
2.5.1 Students’ Attitudes and Trends on Internship
Researchers have published many papers on internships and employability over the last three decades. However, graduates’ viewpoints are most often missed in the employability discussions (Sleap & Reed, 2006; Birch et al., 2010). Graduate attributes are important factors in planning the curriculum of any university undergraduate programme. Integration of generic attributes in the curriculum ensures that students develop skills that will better equip them for the work environment and self-employment. The study of Holmes (2013) points out that on the small number of times that graduate’s views are explored, these are centred either on the career destination of graduates after graduation or in a single case study scenario. Tomlinson (2007:
286) also states that “there has been little recent empirical work exploring how students and graduates are understanding and manage their employability about recent higher education and labour market change.” OECD (2016) identifies statistics on the Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) in Great Britain, six months after their graduation. These DLHE statistics are, however, limited to confirming the graduates’ perspectives on employability (ILO, 2016). On such views as skills needed, the passage from university to the workplace and the graduates’ reaction to their teaching of skills to-date only a few studies have looked at the positions of the graduates (Dhakal et al., 2018). More so, various researchers note that concerns are raised by employers on the competency of novice graduates and the needs of employers to
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be addressed (Billet, 2011; Jackson, 2013; HESA, 2012; NACE, 2013; Zhao & Linden, 2011;
Nankervis et al., 2018).
The work of Nankervis et al., (2015) further provides evidence on the scarcity of research on developing the competency of students in business education. I associate the missing literature with the complex nature of employability. With the burgeoning number of higher education institutions, the existing numbers of unemployed graduates, and the increase of students, skills development t has become more complicated and multidirectional (Business Magazine and Verde Frontier Employability Survey, 2016). Ultimately, assessing employability becomes more difficult. However, some research exists and has tried to elicit graduates’ viewpoints despite the complexities of employability. These results provided useful insights into the graduate perspective.
Tsukamoto (2016) agrees that graduates’ attitudes have changed, and they favour their own choices of having a degree which has led to their career path after graduation. For example, the general tendency today is that graduates target a degree which would enable them to gain a wonderful job, rather than select a degree whose content interests them (Mohd Salleh et al., 2018;
Prikshat et al., 2018). Graduates choose their preferred subjects, which include business-based, scientific, and professional qualifications. Fresh graduates select, as a priority, a qualification related to work. In the same vein, introducing a fee in HEIs in the UK and other countries in 2012 has changed the mind-sets of students who are now becoming more selective for their higher studies (Kalfa & Taksa, 2015); and today’s students could leave education with massive debts. Students expect that their employability skills would improve their difficult financial positions. They also plan to be employable at the end of their studies (Browne, 2010; Khare, 2016). Student’s dream of well-compensated employment and excellent prospects after their graduation. They want the highest returns on their investment (Nankervis et al., 2015).
Students try to avoid fierce competition for graduates’ jobs in the labour market, avoiding the time graduates take to gain employment. The survey and analysis conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, (2006), in the UK, reports that the training programme provides undergraduates with skills transferable into the workplace. Many researchers agree that economic prosperity related to the act of investing in graduates through education and training (Yorke, 2004; Berntson et al., 2006; Tomlinson, 2017). Yeh et al., (2017) confirms that graduates would be a knowledge worker of the future. Graduates are necessary to be up-to-date with
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knowledge, skills, and attitudes, aware of new technology and managing in the economic system.
Recent knowledge, skills, attitudes, and qualities became essential (Wibrow & Jackson, 2016).
Brown et al. (2010) highlight that graduates have to develop skills to enable them to stay employable during their working life. They have immediately made alternatives to what was most profitable for them when competing with other graduates for jobs (Prikshat et al., 2018). It is therefore essential and urgent that graduates’ way of looking at employability is for bettering their careers. Graduates now can gain access to supporting documents on internship and employability prepared by HEIs (Sin & Neave, 2016). For many graduates, the type and level of employment are also important, it is not just about gaining a job. Mohd Salleh et al., (2018) argues there are poor graduate-level jobs, while Prikshat et al., (2018) highlight developing
“underemployment” or “over-education.” Green and Zhu (2010: 24) fix the word “over- qualification” as “disequilibrium, whereby workers hold excess educational qualifications about those their jobs needed.” Graduates often cannot secure graduates’ jobs and as a result, they take on non-graduate level employment (Clarke, 2017). Tran (2015) reports that some graduates are having their services engaged for non-graduate level employment. For example, graduates now may work at a call centre, in customer service, sales, and administrative positions have surged by almost 6%. Graduates maintain that career prospects on a longer-term basis, supported with a degree, are more favourable to becoming competitive in the labour market. Besides, Walker et al., (2015) foreground that only 4% of graduates are not satisfied by winning their degree, institutions also hold with this belief. Majumdar (2016) asserts that graduates can be promoted and therefore it is still more favourable to be a graduate than to have no higher education qualifications. However, Green and Zhu (2010) argue that not all graduates would move to a better position in life or gain a better job on the career ladder. More so, Elias and Purcell (2004) report that 15% of UK graduates who completed five years in employment after graduation remains in non-graduate jobs, for example, working as a clerk, as factory workers, or in hotels.
Also, a well-timed investigation of this problem reported that 40% of fresh graduates are unemployed (Walker et al., 2015). I find it a concern that, as soon as a graduate is underemployed, this was in a non-graduate level job; the graduate might not recover the status of a graduate-level because their skills are underutilised. To support this argument, Mehrotra (2015) reports that they pay underemployed graduates less and develop a smaller number of skills. They do not have the means, ability or know-how to promote such, compared with their graduate-level peers having the same characteristics. The next section presents the internship and students’ work experiences.
40 2.5.2 Internship and Students’ Work Experiences
A significant and growing body of literature has studied the term “work experience” and covered forms, including, among others, placements, internships, WBL, WIL and shadowing (Prospects, 2011; The OU, 2012; Gault, Leach, & Duey, 2010; NACE, 2012; D’Abate et al., 2009; Artess et al., 2011; Speight et al., 2013; Tomlinson, 2017; Clarke, 2017; Montague et al. 2018). The work experiences might vary from two months to 12 months with, for example, responsibilities’
stages corresponding to payment, and job relevancy. For business fields, official course-related work experience was not more challenging when observed and noted than the likenesses or differences to other subjects. Much of the current literature on experience pays particular attention to the most gains to earned by graduates who engaged in work experience. However, regardless of a significant indefinite number of advantages declared, many students neglect the internship’s experience during their studies. The survey carried out on graduates’ experience by HEFCE (2009) suggests the number of students from the university who undertook an internship was low across most degree subjects. For example, around 203,300 students were enrolled in a full-time five-year degree programme in 2002-2003. To arrive at their first-degree, only 4% of them undertook study abroad, and 8% conducted an internship at HEFCE (2009). The issue becomes more complicated as the number of students in the UK and other countries who committed to an internship programme had dropped (MLIRET, 2017 a, b). In a study, MLIRET (2017 a, b) discloses that 25% of students did not complete their internships. Other studies found that little research and literature on the effects of internship even though the circulated application of internships are well documented (Narayanan, Olk, & Fukami, 2010; Rothwell &
Rothwell, 2017). In their work, Cho (2016) reports that students who up took a 12 months internship while following a degree was few. Other researches carried by The National Association of Colleges & Employers (2012) and The Finch et al. study, 2016) show that students enrolled in work experience while studying at university. Sin and Neave (2016) discovered that some graduates undertook work for the allowance, that was only for the money and not for because it offered lessons about a future career. The works of some other researchers supported this finding (Gupta et al., 2016; Khare, 2016).
Recent evidence suggests that students enjoy their work experience (Tsukamoto, 2016). I have applauded such work experiences of students without dissent by the most involved stakeholders.
During internships as a first experience, graduates develop technical ability and sense the first onset of professional action. Graduates who undergo internships have higher job satisfaction and become more ambitious. Internships allow graduates to incorporate the informal network of
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employers, increasing their chances to discover references which may be of extreme importance for future career options. However, graduates who add the internships’ experiences to their academic qualifications in their resumes, have the competitive advantages in the first's attainment job they seek (Montague et al., 2018).
The study of Tomlinson (2017) shows that many students chose a 12-month internship during their university studies. Dhakal et al., (2018) discovered that fewer graduates undertook an internship. Still, many graduates mentioned being concerned about work experience but could not find any placement of their choice or in the proper field of studies (Brook, 2012). Many graduates argued that they own prior work experience. They no longer want to work in companies, for economic reasons. 50% of the undergraduate reported that a short duration internship over the summer holidays month would count as undertaking work experience (Montague et al. 2018). Some graduates have few opportunities available to them after having tried without success to gain work experience. Differences in a position also exist in the graduates’ viewpoints. They recognise that exposure in some fields is mandated for the award of a degree, while in other areas, no contract to undergo practical training in the workplace is available (Jackson, 2015). They do not motivate some students to experience internships unless they find it valuable to their careers.
Graduates are shown in the literature as of diverging viewpoints and as having a different engagement with work experiences. The documentary also reflects that employers rate work experience highly, and those graduates who owned no experience would suffer. However, not all graduates in all HEIs are concerned. Graduates in partnership with an increased number of employers might enable a great number of work experience opportunities being made available to these institutions (Tomlinson, 2017). Employability also improved concomitantly with the university from which the student graduated.
I have not researched the viewpoints of graduates on internship and on the employability debates on a large scale (Mohd Salleh et al., 2018; Prikshat et al., 2018). Nowadays, graduates’ attitudes and their trends in employability have changed because they wish to get a job as soon as they are graduated (Gupta et al., 2016). They decide on the university courses they wish to obtain employment as soon as they are graduated. Some students undergo internships whether the latter is compulsory or facultative. Still, few students engage in a course on a world level. They understand that a degree improves employability, but they have to gain exposure to experiences
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in the workplace to put into practise what they learned in business schools (Billet, 2011;
Mehrotra, 2015). This entails that graduates must set up a broad array of skills and ability, in readiness for employability.