A research team including UW–Madison’s Matthew Hora, Matthew Wolfgram, and Changhee Lee have published an article in the Teachers College Record.
Hora is an associate professor of adult teaching and learning, and the director of the Center for Research on College to Workforce Transitions (CCWT) in the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Wolfgram is the assistant director at CCWT, and Lee is a PhD candidate in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
Zi Chen, a former researcher at CCWT, is also among the article’s co-authors. She is currently a user experience researcher at Facebook.
The article, titled “Closing the Doors of Opportunity: A Field Theoretic Analysis of the Prevalence and Nature of Obstacles to College Internships,” examines the obstacles that college students face when they seek internships. Though internships for college students can enhance their grades, skills, and employment prospects, the authors explain that finding and completing an internship sometimes requires considerable resources.
The research team surveyed over 1,000 students and also held focus groups and interviews on college campuses. Of the students surveyed who reported not having an internship, 69 percent reported barriers such as the need to work, a heavy course load, insufficient positions, and inadequate pay.
The authors conclude that internships are not universally accessible to all college students and instead favor students who have access to financial, social, and cultural capital, or who are positioned in favorable majors, institutions, and geographic locations. They recommend that to make internships more accessible, colleges and universities should secure funding to support student pay and relocation costs, identify alternative forms of experiential learning for working students, and engage employers in creating more in-person and online positions for students across disciplines.
To learn more, access the full article online at tcrecord.org.