STUDENT’S PERCEPTION OF THE VALUE OF INTERNSHIP PROGRAM IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION

Abstract

An internship is a professional learning experience which offers meaningful, practical work relevant to a student’s field of study or career interest. It gives the students an opportunity for exploring the various career choices and acquire varied skills. It also offers an opportunity to bring out the innovative, creative ideas and energy into the workplace. This effectively aims at developing talent and potentially builds a pipeline for future Job prospects that may be ready for challenging roles in future.

Ideally, an internship program helps in strengthening the knowledge base of the students with basic understanding of work in relevant fields, for instance Human Resources – hiring, Finance – data analysis & Marketing – sales. This study focuses on the ‘Perception’ that the students hold in terms of doing such internship Programs & the Value factor the students derives in the process. The internship programs are viewed in different ways by students depending upon their short term and long term goal. 

To have fair idea of the student’s perception, an attempt was made to gather information in the following areas:

• Specialization & duration of internship.


• Purpose of internship.


• Opportunity to explore different functions.


• Major learning.


• Insights of the industry.


• WFH & On-field internships.

This paper also investigates if there is any specific relationship between the duration of internship, the purpose of doing it and the major learning from the program. The outcomes of the study will help the management institutions to plan and offer better internship opportunities to their students. It will also influence the student community and will make them more responsible towards the internship programs.