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Hora, M.T. (2022). Unpaid internships and inequality: A review of the data and recommendations for research, policy, and practice. Policy Brief #2. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Abstract: Internships can be “door openers” to opportunity and social mobility for college students, but unpaid internships pose considerable legal, ethical, and practical challenges. In particular, low-income and first-generation students may be unable to pursue unpaid positions, thereby acting as a discriminatory gatekeeping function that exacerbates inequality. In this policy brief, Associate Professor of Adult & Higher Education Matthew Hora first reviews the evidence regarding the prevalence of unpaid internships and the demographics of students pursuing them, followed by existing policy solutions and recommendations for future research, policy, and educational practice.
Wolfgram, M., Chen, Z., Rodríguez S., J., Ahrens, V., & Hora, M. (2022). Results from the one-year longitudinal follow-up analysis for the College Internship Study at Great Lakes Technical College. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Summary: This report includes findings from the second round of data collection (Spring 2021, T2) at Great Lakes Technical College (GLTC). The data collected at T2 of the study include an online survey of 205 students and 18 students’ follow-up interviews who participated in the first round of data collection (Spring 2020 or T1). These data are analyzed to provide faculty, staff, and leadership at GLTC with evidence based insights about the impacts of internship participation on students’ lives and careers.
Hora, M.T., Colston, J., Chen, Z., & Pasqualone, A. (2021). National Survey of College Internships (NSCI) 2021 Report: Insights into the prevalence, quality, and equitable access to internships in higher education. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Summary: This report includes findings from the 17-campus pilot phase of the National Survey of College Internships (NSCI) project, which included survey responses from 12, 130 college students. Data include new insights on the prevalence of internship participation in these institutions (just 21.5%), intern demographics, the average distance traveled to an internship (315 miles), the quality of intern supervision, and the nature of obstacles preventing 67.3% of survey respondents from pursuing an internship.
What can we learn from longitudinal studies on the impacts of college internships?
Fangjing Tu
Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT)
University of Wisconsin Madison
Literature Review #5
Internships have been widely considered as co-curricular opportunities that benefit students with hands-on work experience, smooth transitions to the labor market, and potentially better compensation. Current studies on the impacts of internship participation are mostly cross-sectional. Only a few studies in the research literature employ longitudinal research methodologies. Longitudinal research can be used to measure and understand the long-term effects of internship participation for students. It also provides more robust evidence for causal interpretations of internship effects. This literature review summarizes the main findings and insights from 11 longitudinal studies on the impact of internship participation, aiming to contribute to the knowledge about the long-term benefits and causal processes of college internships.
Schalewski, L. (2021). The Role of Socioeconomic Status and Internships on Early Career Earnings: Evidence for Widening and Rerouting Pathways to Social Mobility. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (Research Brief #18). University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Abstract: The research brief first summarizes findings on internships, a university structure, pulled from a study that more broadly examined how student engagement and high-impact practices relate to post-graduation outcomes among students from different SES backgrounds (Schalewski, 2020). First, results suggest internships have a mediating role between a student’s (SES) and early career earnings. Next, results show students from middle-SES backgrounds or those within quartiles two and three experience a significant effect from internship participation on early career earnings with non-significant findings for the lowest and highest quartiles. The brief concludes with implications for practice that aim to widen and reroute pathways to internships for lower- SES students to increase opportunities that lead to higher early career salaries and set trajectories for social mobility.
Bañuelos, N. (2021). Community Cultural Wealth Goes to College: A Review of the Literature for Career Services Professionals and Researchers. Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (Research Brief #17). University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wisconsin Center for Education Research.
Abstract: Created by LatCrit scholars in the mid-2000s, Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) is an anti-deficit framework for understanding educational inequality. Since its publication, Yosso’s (2005) seminal paper on the topic has been cited thousands of times by scholars in fields as distinct as engineering, K12 education, and public health. This report reviews the recent scholarship on college students’ experiences and outcomes that uses CCW as a guiding framework. Although the intended audience for this review is career services professionals in colleges and universities, my hope is it can also be helpful for scholars of career development who want to brush up on the CCW literature and consider future research questions the framework presents. The existing literature offers insights on the college-to-career transition: it reveals the centrality of familial capital in shaping students’ career pathways, the function of resistant capital in forming students’ career interests, the utility of students’ existing social capital in the job search process, and the role of counterspaces in activating CCW for career success. However, CCW scholarship typically focuses on college students’ matriculation, persistence, sources of support, and well-being, not on their career development—including the psychological, spiritual, sociocultural, political and economic factors influencing students’ career interests and the knowledge, relationships, and environmental contexts shaping their career choices (Duffy & Dik, 2009). This gap presents opportunities for researchers and career services professionals to partner in creating and evaluating programming with CCW in mind. There are also opportunities to increase the methodological diversity of CCW scholarship, to consider the ways in which students mix CCW with “dominant” forms of capital for career success, to collect data from employers, faculty, and other gatekeepers, and to account for the role of institutional context.
Wolfgram, M., Vivona, B., Akram, T., Rodríguez S., J., Chen, Z., & Hora, M. T. (2021). Results from the 1-year longitudinal follow-up analysis for the College Internship Study at Northeastern Illinois University. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions.
Summary: The College Internship Study examines the long-term impacts of internships on students’ lives and careers. Here, we highlight the findings from 177 survey responses and twelve interviews with students at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU). They were conducted in the Fall of 2020 (Time 2 or T2), one year after the first round of data collection in 2019 (Time 1 or T1). This second round of the College Internship Study is guided by the following research question: What are the changes concerning students’ internship experiences and outcomes comparing longitudinal data at two points in time?
Wolfgram, M., Colston, J., Chen, Z., Akram, T., & Hora, M. T. (2021). Results from the College Internship Study at Georgia College. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions.
Summary: This report includes findings from the first round of data collection (Spring 2020) at Georgia College for The College Internship Study, which is a national mixed-methods longitudinal study of internship programs conducted bythe Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). The findings are based on an interdisciplinary sample of students who took an online survey (n = 329), interviews with students who have and who have not had an internship experience (n = 25) and an interview with one educator (n = 1).