Disadvantages Of Internships

An internship is a temporary position with a firm with an emphasis on on-the-job training where the employer offers the intern either paid or unpaid employment for limited duration of time. In most cases, interns tend to be university or college students although it is not strange these days to find high school students working as interns during vacations. Sometimes the words ‘work placements’ are used in place of ‘internship’. Principally, internship is supposed to be more about learning and acquiring practical experiences a student will need in future in his field of study rather than immediate employment. Such experiences are intended to be invaluable as the student gets a chance to translate the theory learned in class into practical work

Through this interaction, comes the benefit of networking, an invaluable asset in modern times. Internships also are a chance for the student to showcase and ‘market’ himself to future employers. Finally internships are one sure way of building a student’s CV and portfolio because when applying for work in a company, the student can list the firms with which he has interned with and if these are reputable and well known, his chances of getting hired are increased significantly. Internships for credits, service learning and job-shadowing are some examples of internship. The bigger question in the context of this essay is to discuss whether internships are beneficial or useful to a firm that takes on interns or to the student who gets interned or to both the firm and the

There is no doubt that internships offer students with valuable experience in areas they probably have only covered in theory as well as the chance to put those theories into practice. It must be acknowledged here that what matter in the work place is the ability to convert the theories learnt in class into practical work. Some people might argue that in institutions, there are laboratories where students can do practical work and by extension, get used to given scenarios in real life. However, laboratory work can only augment what is actively learned in the field. The real deal at the place of work is the unexpected: the ‘out of the book’ situation that demands thinking on ones feet and coming up with an immediate solution. This kind of learning can only be achieved in a real place of work and that is what internship actually does. Furthermore, internship provides a student with knowledge that the student might not have known previously. This is usually knowledge that is out of the prescribed school curriculum: what can be referred to as the hidden curriculum. Thus during internship the student will learn this hidden curriculum about interpersonal skills, conflict resolution, and other sublime attributes such as manners and respect at the place where is interning. These of course are outside the scope of the regular syllabus or curriculum but they are valuable in the