Opinion: graduates need internships to prepare for the job market
While there are many reasons for students to commence a university degree, from self-development to fighting boredom, the majority of university entrants are motivated by a drive to build a successful professional career. This is why the lion's share of university programs are promoted as tickets to successful employment. It’s assumed that once studies are completed, graduates will be ready to join the workforce. However, this is often not the case. Many graduates confess to a lack of job readiness. As a result, the jobs tend to go to those who already have some industry experience, rather than to the freshers. This raises an obvious question: If there is indeed a skills gap that the fresh graduates are experiencing, what is the best way of dealing with it?
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I work at a major university and manage the placement function for a large School, placing over 600 students per year.
In our sector finding placements is the easiest part, and as far as I know is not too difficult for other comparable areas.
The central problem relates to a large supply of graduates vs a small supply of jobs.
The challenge is not in finding the right number of internship placements; it’s in finding the relevant placement for each student so that they can apply some of what they have been learning and gain experience appropriate to their field of study. Such experience will, in turn, help new graduates to convince future employers that they not only know something of relevance, but that they can do something of relevance. To achieve that outcome, placements have to be vetted carefully, protections put in place, and students and host organisations adequately prepared and supported. Resource intensive? You bet! Worthwhile? You bet!
My experience is that Universities seeking to benefit their students by arranging these placements are at times faced with a a difficult balancing act. As employers are seeking more value from staff, they are also seeking more value from interns. In some cases, particularly where a ‘scholarship’ is also offered, it can be a very fine line between a work experience that is legitimately unpaid vs employment that does not meet legal requirements such as those relating to employment entitlements and tax. This is a line that the Universities must be most familiar with to ensure internships are legally compliant and to protect their students. Clear and specific guidance from Fair Work (placements other than those that meet ‘vocational placement’ criteria) and the ATO (when scholarship payments might be regarded as payment for services when a placement is also involved), combined with law reform if required, might assist in enabling more placements or at least more certainty for Universities trying to support their students by finding placements.
Dear all, thank you very much for the feedback. I think all of us appear to agree that placements are important.
Re finding the placements. For Business degree graduates/students – finding a good placement is not easy at all.