CCWT Publications

Hora, M.T. (2025). Teaching transferable skills using a sociocultural perspective: A guide for faculty and institutions for creating college courses that highlight disciplinary knowledge, professional norms, and habits of mind. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Excerpt: We are in a moment in the early 21st century where higher education in both the U.S. and around the world is increasingly focused on students’ post-graduate success in the labor market, or what some call “career readiness.” This focus is sparking conversations about credentials, artificial intelligence (AI),  career pathways, “hot” new jobs, and whether certain skills are being taught in college – competencies popularly known as soft, non-cognitive, social-emotional,
or transferable skills (e.g., critical thinking, communication, teamwork). Increased attention to transferable skills is an immensely positive development, as students will need these competencies to not only thrive in the rapidly changing world of work, but also to properly address problems facing society such as rampant misinformation, a climate emergency, and dizzying technological advances.

But the higher education sector is not well prepared to teach students transferable skills, largely because faculty are too often not trained in how to teach and design a course, much less the more challenging task of teaching complex skills like critical thinking or teamwork. While faculty professional development (PD) is becoming more common, many focus on technique alone (e.g., active learning, inclusive pedagogy) without addressing the problem of skills development, or rely on overly brief one-time workshops on “teaching soft skills.” While some promising examples of robust skills-oriented faculty PD do exist, they are limited  by the dominant discourse of skills as generic, de-contextualized “competencies” or “soft skills.” This generic perspective is most evident in influential lists such as the NACE Career Competencies or the AAC&U’s Essential Learning Outcomes (ELOs) – where complex transferable skills such as communication are unfortunately reduced to descriptors such as, “clearly and effectively exchange information, ideas, facts, and perspectives.”

Song, H. & Hora, M. T. (2024). Navigating Barriers to Access Internships: Challenges for Thwarted Interns Across Institution Types and Student Demographics. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin–Madison, Division of Continuing Studies.

Executive Summary

This study investigates the barriers for students at 2-year and 4-year institutions to successfully pursue an internship, an experience that research indicates can have positive impacts on academic development and post-graduate career success. Given prior research suggesting that various demographic and academic attributes such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, first-generation status, and field of study may influence student experiences with various obstacles, we use a combination of descriptive analysis, heat map visualization, and logistic regression to provide new insights into the nature of college student encounters with these barriers.

As part of a partnership between Strada Education and the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Research on College Transitions, the National Survey of College Internships (NSCI) was administered in the Spring of 2023 across diverse institutions in the U.S. For this analysis the study sample included 1,067 students from 2-year institutions and 1,016 students from 4-year institutions who had not taken an internship but had been interested in doing so (n=2,083) – a population that we call the “thwarted interns.” These students were asked whether nine possible barriers (e.g., heavy course load, lack of childcare) had prevented them from successfully finding and securing an internship. Descriptive analysis with heat maps and logistic regression analyses were used to illustrate and quantify the extend and distribution of these obstacles.

Liu, R., & Glave, C. (2023). The Alignment Between Internship, College Major, & Career Plan: Differential Experiences Across Gender, Race, & Major Groups. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin–Madison, Division of Continuing Studies.

Abstract: This study proposes a novel tripartite alignment framework for internship studies to investigate alignment among student internship experiences, academic training in major programs, and career plans. Utilizing data from the College Internship Study, we examine demographic and programmatic factors associated with internship-major and internship-career alignment, and how these factors interact to affect overall internship satisfaction. While most students perceive their internships as relevant to their academic programs and career plans, a non-negligible group of students experience internship-major and internship-career misalignment, and the levels of misalignment vary across gender, race, major programs as well as their intersections. In particular, women engaged in paid internships report a lower level of internship-major alignment than women in unpaid internships, while this adverse effect is not found for men, indicating a potentially gendered trade-off between financial gains and academic training when making internship decisions. Moreover, while White students in health majors experience relatively higher internship-major alignment than business students, the same does not hold for Black and Latinx students, highlighting potential disparities in accessing quality internship programs in health sectors. Analyses further demonstrate that internship-major and internship-career alignment are positively associated with overall internship satisfaction. These findings provide preliminary insights into the tripartite internship-major-career alignment and its implications for students’ internship experiences, informing potential strategies for diversifying the workforce and enhancing school-to-work transitions. We discuss future research directions adopting this novel framework.

Keywords: Internship, horizontal match, career development, school-to-work transition