Paid and unpaid graduate internships: prevalence, quality and motivations at six months after graduation

ABSTRACT

Secondary analysis of the UK’s 2011/12 Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education survey reveals that many existing assumptions about graduate internships are questionable. This article proposes a reliable way of estimating the true extent of internships including those reported as ‘voluntary’ jobs: hidden internships. In doing so the article finds: 1) At six months after graduation, internships are a small feature of the UK graduate labour market, but significant in certain sectors; 2) Unpaid internships are much more prevalent than previously estimated, especially in these same sectors; and 3) Contrary to some public policy debate, unpaid internships appear, on balance, to be a residual option more likely to lead to underemployment and less favourable career development outcomes. Post-graduation internships appear less likely than pre-graduation work experiences to confer long-term employability advantages.

KEYWORDS:

• Internships
• employability
• graduate labour market
• transitions into employment

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Sutton Trust and the Bespoke Data Service at HESA for their work in supplying the DLHE data and answering questions. The authors would also like to thank Prof. Meek and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Responsibility for interpretation of data and any errors lies with the authors alone. We acknowledge funding sources for this research from a PhD studentship bursary and internal research project grant from Portsmouth Business School.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Wil Hunt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0575-7649

Peter Scott http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3595-9049

Notes

1 The data analysed in this article is the Copyright Higher Education Statistics Agency Limited 2013. HESA cannot accept responsibility for any inferences or conclusions derived from the data by third parties.

2 https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2016-17/nationalminimumwageworkplaceinternships.html.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Faculty research project grant and PhD studentship bursary from Portsmouth Business School of the University of Portsmouth, UK.