“Internships have assumed an increasingly important role in the pathways that promise to lead from education … [among others] into paid jobs in a wide range of professions and other occupations” say Stewart, Owens, O'Higgins and Hewitt (2021: 335). Internships are generally “undertaken as part of, concurrently with, or after a formal programme of education and training”, and might be called “a traineeship, placement or practicum”, or something different in a particular context or location.
An internship might be part of the curriculum of a qualification of an education or training institution; a certification requirement of a professional body; “created and advertised by an organization for its own purposes” (Stewart et al., 2021: 335); or even the result of an intern’s own initiative. Interns might be sourced, or placements facilitated, by a broker or intermediary; directly by the education or training institution concerned; or by the intern her or himself. An internship might take place in the intern’s home country, or internationally.
An internship “may seek to impart, enhance or offer the opportunity to utilize particular skills or knowledge. It may offer a chance to gain experience of working in a particular organization or sector, or to make contacts that will be valuable to career progression. Alternatively, it may serve simply as a rite of passage that everyone is expected to go through in a particular industry, regardless of how much the work involved actually resembles what the intern may ultimately be hoping or expecting to do if they find paid employment.” (Stewart et al., 2021: 335).
Internships vary in their effectiveness, observe Stewart et al. (2021: 336), but “structured, formal and, by extension, regulated internships are likely to be more successful in providing an effective bridge to long-term employment”. Furthermore “when properly conceived and monitored, educational internships, as well as internships undertaken as part of governmental active labour market programmes (ALMPs), are capable of producing better outcomes than unregulated open-market internships”. Stewart et al. (2021: 336) emphasise that “structure and formality are needed to ensure that interns acquire useful skills”.
Stewart et al. (2021: 335-6) identified “four general and to some extent overlapping concerns”:
- internships do not always deliver on the promise of useful training and skill development
- contrary to perception, internships do not necessarily create a bridge from education to paid work, especially when no remuneration is provided
- the cost of undertaking unpaid or low-paid internships is likely to be harder to bear for those from less advantaged backgrounds, especially if it is necessary to travel to an expensive location to complete them
- the availability of interns as a source of cheap labour creates an incentive for the displacement of paid entry-level jobs and the evasion of minimum wage laws
Stewart et al. (2021: 336) recommend more research to understand the scope of internships, “how they are structured, what role they play, whom they benefit, the extent to which there is any quality assurance in relation to their content, delivery or oversight, and how (if at all) compliance is ensured with any relevant regulation”.
Stewart, A.; Owens, R.; O’Higgins, N. & Hewitt, A. (2021). Developing new standards for internships. In Stewart, A., Owens, R., O'Higgins, N. & Hewitt, A. (2021). Internships, Employability and the Search for Decent Work Experience, Ch. 20, 335-348. Electronically accessible from https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781800885035/9781800885035.00032.xml
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