Transitions from higher education to labour market: Observatory of internships in business organizations

Abstract

The main objective of the present study is to present a proposal for an observatory based on the impact of Curricular Internships in business organizations, internships in higher education, with the overall goal to provide a better understanding of the transition process of students from higher education to the labour market. In this paper, besides the bibliographical revision carried out, preliminary results from an ongoing empirical study carried out with students enrolled in the Management Bachelor degree at the Portucalense University, Portugal, will be presented. This study aims to provide evidence for the development of an Observatory based on the impact of student curricular Internships in business organizations. Data collection was based on the analysis of results from student evaluations achieved in the Internship course, in the academic years of 2014/15 and 2015/16, of the Management degree at UPT. For this, the evaluation results of students provided by the Curricular Internship Advisor, through an Evaluation Form completed at the end of the internship (evaluation criteria focus mainly on the assessment of transversal competences) and the evaluation results based on student ’s final grade achieved in the internship course (as a result of the evaluation of the internship report, its presentation and public discussion), were considered. Based on the statistical analysis carried out, results show that the average results obtained in both academic years are very similar. In 2014/15, the average evaluation was of 4.4 points, while in 2015/16 the average achieved was 4.5 points, based on a five-point Likert scale. Findings obtained from this Observatory contribute to widen the analysis of its effectiveness in terms of future research and actions in regard to the transition of Higher Education pathways to the Labour Market.