How do students conceptualise the college internship experience? Towards a student-centred approach to designing and implementing internships

ABSTRACT

At a time when colleges and universities are anxious to prove that their graduates are employable, internships are being increasingly touted as valuable ‘high-impact’ practices. However, how students themselves conceptualise internships is poorly understood, which inhibits the inclusion of their voices in the employability discourse and considerations of program design. In this study we use the freelisting method from cultural anthropology to analyse data from students (n = 57) in three US colleges, using saliency analysis, thematic analysis, and social network analysis techniques. Results indicate that the most salient terms in the cultural domain of internships were: ‘experience,’ ‘learning,’ ‘paid,’ and ‘connections.’ Students discussed these words in utilitarian terms (e.g. something to ‘get’ for one’s resume), as important aspects of career- and self-exploration, and to highlight the importance of compensation. Differences in the complexity of student accounts were evident between students who had taken an internship and those who had not. These findings highlight how common definitions of internships reflect a homogenous and aspirational perspective that is inconsistent with student accounts. We conclude that students’ insights about internships are important to consider to re-frame the employability debate to include student perspectives and experiences, to avoid one-size-fits-all approaches to internship design, and to facilitate student self-reflection.

KEYWORDS:

• Internship
• higher education
• student voice
• program design

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the student participants in this study, advisors and administrators at participating institutions, the support of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (especially Dr. Robert Mathieu), and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for their encouragement, critiques and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew T. Hora

Dr. Matthew T. Hora is an Assistant Professor of Adult and Higher Education, and the Director of the Center for Research for College-Workforce Transitions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  His training in cultural anthropology and the learning sciences informs an inter-disciplinary research program focused on documenting the cognitive, cultural, and institutional factors that shape teaching and learning dynamics in the classroom and in co-curricular spaces, with the ultimate goal of improving the educational experiences of all postsecondary students.

Emily Parrott

Dr. Emily Parrott is currently the Director of Evaluation at Teaching Trust, an education nonprofit in Dallas, TX. She received her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where her research focused on college students’ postsecondary educational experiences as a primary and potentially transformative force in shaping their later adult lives as well as their family’s social mobility and well-being.

Pa Her

Pa Her is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Counseling Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is passionate about working with college students and has experience working with diverse clients as a psychotherapist. Her research examines students’ of color experiences in higher education and focuses on topics such as persistence, vocational development, social class, self-efficacy, and racial discrimination.