As colleges around the country explore how to make students’ learning more experience-based, Clemson University is betting that campus internships will do the job.
Clemson’s new University Professional Internship/Co-op Program is offering students positions for a semester or a summer in a variety of departments on the campus. The effort is ambitious, with plans to create more than 400 internships by 2016, at a potential cost of more than $1-million per year.
The move comes at a time when South Carolina has reduced its support for Clemson by $80-million, or 47 percent, since 2008, and campus officials have had to make difficult budget cuts.
But a growing number of students were coming to administrators with a desire for job-related training, including campus internships, and those administrators saw an opportunity. The program got final approval, a director, and a budget, and started during the past academic year.
Campus internships are good for students’ learning as well as their employment prospects, says Neil B. Burton, executive director of career services and cooperative education at Clemson. “From an employer’s perspective,” he says, “they are going to be a much more attractive candidate and have that professional edge.”
Mr. Burton also hopes that the program, which has 33 participants this summer, will help Clemson stand out among other major universities. Without a medical or law school, he says, it is seeking other ways to distinguish itself. “Clemson would like to be a top-20 public university,” he says. “What the administration decided is that we want to make sure that we engage students in what they are learning.”
Research shows that experience-based learning can develop students’ communication skills as well as prepare them for employment. Students who participate in internships or conduct research with faculty members are 10 percent likelier to feel that they have gained work-related skills, according to the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement.
In Clemson’s internship program, staff members in campus departments can apply to serve as mentors to students who work for the university as paid interns, part or full time. The program is separate from Federal Work-Study, in which students often find jobs as office assistants, for example.
The positions are geared toward career development, says Troy D. Nunamaker, director of the program.
Prospective mentors’ applications are judged by to their ability to provide interns with a good learning experience and practical work skills. For example, business and accounting majors in the program have provided financial consulting and helped develop business plans for the campus’s chief financial officer. Engineering majors have worked on energy-audit projects and building systems and control, as well as other projects, for the facilities department.
Most interns work about 10 to 15 hours a week and take a regular course load. Full-timers work about 40 hours a week.
This past academic year, about 60 part-time and six full-time internships were filled, at a cost to Clemson of about $256,000. As the university adds 400 part-time and 30-full time internships and co-ops by 2015-16, the cost is projected to increase to $1.1-million.
One way that officials have proposed increasing the number of positions is requiring vendors that work on the campus to offer jobs to students. For legal and practical reasons, that idea is still under review, Mr. Burton says. Campus departments pay 25 percent of the interns’ salaries, and the university itself covers the remaining 75 percent. (The projected costs do not include the departments’ contributions.)
Clemson will approve the program’s budget on an annual basis. Administrators have already allotted $521,000 for 2012-13, Mr. Nunamaker says, allowing for 120 part-time and 10 full-time positions.
Recent changes have made the new program financially possible. Tuition, one revenue stream for the internship program, has gone up in recent years. Tuition and fees have risen by 25 to 31 percent, depending on students’ status, since 2007-8, according to the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education.
Clemson also has cut costs, by eliminating 400 positions through severance incentives and retirement since 2008, says Robin S. Denny, a spokeswoman for the university. The internship program, she adds, is not a way to replace full-time employees.
On or Off Campus
At a time when most colleges are struggling with tight budgets, Clemson’s internship program appears to be unusual.
An informal poll this month on an e-mail list for campus officials who coordinate internships asked whether they were looking to increase the number of positions for students on their campuses. Among more than 30 responses, some administrators said they wanted to, but most were unsure if they could. None was considering an expansion on Clemson’s scale.
Offering internships on campuses is a good strategy in college towns without easy access to businesses, government agencies, or nonprofit organizations, says Michael D. True, who runs the e-mail list and directs the internship center at Messiah College, in Pennsylvania.
But it is still preferable for students to get internships off campus, he says, because employers may question if the evaluation standards are the same at a college as opposed to an outside company or organization.
Still, in this tight job market, an on-campus internship is far better than none at all, says J. Robert Shindell, director of content and resource development at the recruiting-and-consulting firm Intern Bridge. “We should be more focused on internships outside of campus,” he says. “But at the same time, not every student is going to be able to get one of those.”
To expand students’ opportunities, more colleges should try to follow Clemson’s lead, Mr. Shindell says. “So many institutions have some of the puzzle pieces and just need to put them together.” But without the right leadership and funds, he says, they may not be able to.
Mr. Nunamaker, director of Clemson’s program, hopes that students use the campus internships as a jumping-off point to outside internships or jobs. “Maybe as a sophomore or junior, they can do an internship here. Then, by the time they are seniors, they can hit an off-campus one as well.”
Marielle P. Orr is a rising senior at Clemson with a major in communication studies. Next fall, as part of the internship program, she will work for the university’s public-affairs office, writing articles and news releases and representing students at events.
Ms. Orr, 25, thinks the university’s investment is worth it, because internships in the program are designed to train students for their careers.
“They emphasize very much real, engaging work with professionals, not some ‘Get me some coffee and get some copies for me’ kind of internship,” she says. The kind of work she’ll be doing, she says, is “the relevant type of experience that companies are looking for today.”
Ms. Orr didn’t look for an internship off campus. She doesn’t think that matters to employers, she says.
“It matters what kind of work you do,” she says. “A company will be just as impressed with this campus internship.”
