With Internships, the Issue Is Supply, Not Demand

By Laura Thompson Love, Senior Vice President, Work-Based Learning at Strada Education Foundation 

Via LinkedIn

For students, a paid internship comes with abundant benefits: A greater chance of securing a job. Increased opportunities to explore careers, develop skills, and grow professional networks. The likelihood of higher pay one year after graduation.

Yet even though internships impart a strong labor market advantage that tends to persist after graduation, the nation’s supply of internships has not kept up with demand. A new report from the Business-Higher Education Forum provides insights into why employers value internships, why more employers don’t offer them, and how to increase the supply and quality of internships. The report provides crucial new analysis for postsecondary education leaders, employers, and policymakers seeking to leverage internships as a vehicle to boost student outcomes and meet critical workforce needs.

An estimated 3.6 million undergraduate students completed an internship in 2023, but another 4.6 million wanted the opportunity and could not participate. In order to understand this gap, we need to better understand what’s preventing employers from creating or expanding internships today.

The new report, “Expanding Internships: Harnessing Employer Insights To Boost Opportunity and Enhance Learning,” offers the employer voice — a perspective often missing in the conversation about access to paid internships. It is based on a survey of 2,692 employers, plus a labor market analysis and additional interviews and focus groups. Among the most interesting insights from employers:

• The most influential factor in whether an employer offers internships is the employer’s need for early-career hiring talent, with 80 percent of respondents reporting that developing talent drives their decision to offer internships.

• When employers were asked which factors discourage them from starting or expanding internships, nearly half cite operational challenges such as finding qualified candidates and identifying tasks at the appropriate level for interns.

• Nearly 1 in 3 employers indicated that some portion of available internships went unfilled in 2023, suggesting a need for students and employers to more readily find each other.

The study also reveals an appetite for partnerships that can deliver benefits at scale: More than half of employers felt partnerships with four-year universities would help them scale their internship programs, and more than one-third also felt partnerships with two-year institutions or government workforce development officials would help them to start or expand their internship program.

Resources often are lacking to sustain and scale these partnerships, and intermediary organizations, such as chambers of commerce, workforce boards, tech start-ups, and nonprofit organizations, can help lower up-front costs for employers in designing and scaling internship programs. At the national level, organizations such as the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation support employers in designing work-based learning. At the regional and state levels, many organizations are already leaders in this work, such as the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, which has prioritized the expansion of internships for Indiana students.

Though there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work for every employer, now is the time to consider bold, proactive innovations that can expand opportunities for all.

• Employers can thoroughly assess their entry-level talent needs and ensure they are maximizing the use of paid internships as a talent pipeline to fill those needs.

• Higher education institutions can create dedicated internship advisors whose sole focus is to cultivate internship and other work-based learning opportunities. For larger institutions, organizing these positions by college or industry develops specialized expertise and simplifies engagement with employers. In addition, institutions can evaluate how they are preparing students for success in internships, such as by evaluating the integration of NACE’s career readiness competencies into their curriculum. Providing ongoing coaching to students during internships can increase the benefits of partnership for employers and the likelihood of sustained engagements over time.

• Policymakers can devote more funding to high-quality intermediary organizations, particularly those that are industry-driven and focus capacity on designing internships and other work-based learning initiatives at the regional level. State leaders also can set statewide internship goals and reiterate the value of work-based learning to institution and industry leaders.

• Regional business-led groups such as chambers of commerce and industry associations can prioritize work-based learning and demonstrate the value of paid internships to members, as well as provide consultation on design, student placement, appropriate work tasks, and conversion-to-hire strategies.

• Even students themselves can play a role by reaching out to employers in their community about internship opportunities — even if the employer hasn’t posted any. The report found 87 percent of employers fill internship slots informally, such as through outreach from a student. Intentional, equitable efforts to build social capital will help equip students with the tools to find internships on their own.

And then there are recommendations that all of us can follow: Throughout your career, promote the value of paid internships at your company or organization, and share with students the importance of internships, facilitating professional connections when possible. By investing in internships today, we are strengthening the workforce of tomorrow.