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The vast majority—85 percent—of college students and recent grads surveyed believe that people pursuing their type of career need at least one internship experience. Yet four in 10 respondents, and three in 10 in the Class of 2022, report not having had a single internship or experiential learning opportunity outside a classroom.
That’s all according to an August Student Voice survey of 2,116 students conducted by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse with support from Kaplan. The survey also revealed that commuting challenges may be holding students back from pursuing and accepting in-person opportunities.
Karen McCormack, who has taught internship support courses at Wheaton College, in Massachusetts, finds it striking how students generally grade their colleges well on supporting these experiences, yet so many are “struggling with the basic need to find a way to get to a physical internship. A lot of times students will need to work through what the logistics of it are, because they haven’t done that.”
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For example, Wheaton is located between Providence, R.I., and Boston and offers a shuttle to the commuter rail. “There’s a time commitment on public transportation as opposed to hopping in a car,” says McCormack, a professor of sociology and the associate provost for academic administration and faculty affairs at the college, which has a curriculum that connects academic interests to career success. In courses with internship components, she adds, “we will strategize about how to get to a bus, where they’d need to go.”
While a growing number of higher ed institutions are offering assistance with the cost aspect of internship commutes, some may see this as less necessary due to the explosion of virtual internship opportunities. But McCormack worries about creating a two-tier system, where students who can afford transportation get a “grade-A internship experience and students who can’t are the ones getting remote [offerings].”
Student Voice survey respondents who have had virtual internships tended to get less out of them compared to those completing in-person ones. For example, one in four agreed that it was hard to tell if they wanted to pursue that kind of work because of the limitations of that virtual experience.
The survey also points to equity concerns, with greater transportation struggles for certain demographic groups, including Black students and international students studying at U.S. colleges.
Creating more experiential content within courses is one way institutions can ensure students are gaining real-world experiences. “Doing that through classes is a way to build it into the structure of the day,” says McCormack, noting that traditional internship experiences do run the risk of being “an add-on that’s divorced from the experience of the academic world.”
Sixty-five percent of students surveyed see their experiential learning opportunities as having been very helpful in preparing them for a future job, and an additional 33 percent rate them as somewhat helpful.
Want to print and share this infographic? Request a free letter-size PDF here.
To maximize learning, all types of experiences should be available, experts agree. Opening up in-person internship possibilities to all students involves realizing where the need is and developing assistance options. The below infographic answers three questions about internship transportation and support needs, plus shares how some colleges are helping students navigate commute hurdles.
More coverage of the Student Voice survey: What Students Want and Get From Internships.
