UW-Madison’s Matthew Hora was interviewed for a recent New York Times report headlined, “Another Casualty of the Coronavirus: Summer Internships.”
Hora is an assistant professor with our Department of Educational Policy Studies and the director of the Center for Research on College-Workforce Transitions (CCWT).
The Times reports how for “millions of college students, internships can be a steppingstone to full-time work, a vital source of income and even a graduation requirement. But like so much else, summer internships have been upended by the pandemic, with a wide range of major companies, including tech firms like Yelp and entertainment behemoths like the Walt Disney Company, canceling programs and rescinding offers.”
The Times adds: “Some companies are continuing to pay interns to work from home, sending corporate laptops in the mail and holding get-to-know-you sessions over Zoom. But students fear that remote internships will not afford the networking opportunities that can make spending a summer in an office so valuable, especially for interns who have few professional contacts.”
“You pick up a lot of subtle clues about how to behave in that profession, how to communicate like an engineer, how to work in teams like a nurse,” Hora tells the New York Times. “Students are going to be missing that.”
Check out the full, in-depth report via this NYTimes.com web page.