Internships in business higher education: students’ perception and valuation

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions have been increasingly requested to promote the employability of their graduates and to develop a set of skills essential to the labor market. On the other hand, graduates’ integration in the labor market has become gradually more difficult and competitive, leading students to look for new and improved methods to increase their employability. One of these methods is to complement the academic background with practical experience. Working experiences, particularly internships, have played an important role both as an employability factor and as a mean of transferring knowledge acquired through academic training to the work environment, but also as a way of developing this knowledge and acquiring practice experience. In this context, Higher Education Institutions, seeking to improve their training offer and to ensure competitive advantage, have also sought to enrich their curricula, in particular by including internships on the degrees. The degree in Retail Management from the ESTGA-UA has integrated three curricular internships, one in each year of the degree. The objective of this work is to examine students' perception of the curricular internships in four aspects: to understand the importance that the students give to the internships in the degree; to realize whether they allow theory/practice association; if the fears associated with the transition to the labor market are reduced and if these internships are perceived as an important employability factor. A questionnaire was developed and applied to the students of Commercial Management of the first, second and third year, throughout four consecutive academic years. The results show that students value the existence of internships in the curriculum of their undergraduate course. In their perspective internships also allow the connection between theory and practice and reduce the initial uncertainties of entry into active life. Finally, the Retail Management students see the internships as an important and differentiating factor of employability in the job market.