Not only are there growing concerns about the supply of apprenticeships meeting demand; there’s a shortage of another important workforce training tool — internships.
There were an estimated 5.7 million fewer high-quality internships last year than learners who wanted to intern, according to the Business-Higher Education Forum, or BHEF.
Employers last year provided 2.5 million high-quality internships, compared to 8.2 million people who wanted one, the BHEF found. Another million internships that were offered fell short of high standards of quality and skills development, the organization said.
“It costs money to have folks who are coordinating internships,” said Jennifer Thornton, BHEF’s senior vice president and chief program officer. “So resources matter.”
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Black and Hispanic students and students who were the first in their families to go to college, came from low-income backgrounds or attended community colleges were among the least likely to secure an internship, according to the BHEF. Asian students in four-year colleges and universities were the most likely to be rejected for them.
A separate study, by the advocacy organization California Competes, found that women were also less likely than men in that state to complete paid internships, and students whose parents went to college were three times more likely to complete one than students whose parents didn’t go.
“Who’s going to have the most access for those informal networks? It’s typically going to be associated with socioeconomic status and social capital,” said Thornton. Meanwhile, better-resourced colleges and universities “also connect more regularly with their alumni, who can be invaluable in terms of connecting students with internships.”
Related: Internships matter but not everyone can get one
Experts say legal challenges to internship programs that give preference to applicants from marginalized groups are likely to make that mismatch worse.
Under pressure from a conservative group, for instance, the accounting firm PwC stopped giving preference to applicants to a student internship program based in part on racial identity.
Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@hechingerreport.org
This story about looking for internships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.
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