Why don’t they see the benefit? Encouraging students to undertake placements, internships & volunteering - Charlotte Poole
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Presentation at the HEA-funded workshop 'Using active and experiential Learning to improve student employability in Business and Marketing'. This workshop was aimed at colleagues seeking ideas and advice about incorporating active and experiential learning into the marketing curriculum or wishing to improve upon current practice. The workshop identified various approaches which enable students to gain valuable employability skills and considered the benefits and disadvantages of these approaches. This presentation is part of a related blog post that provides an overview of the event: http://bit.ly/NanSOJ For further details of the HEA's work on active and experiential learning in the Social Sciences, please see: http://bit.ly/17NwgKX
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Why don’t they see the benefit? Encouraging students to undertake placements, internships & volunteering - Charlotte Poole
- 1. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Why don’t they see the benefit? Encouraging students to undertake placements, internships and volunteering Charlotte Poole
- 2. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Session outline • What do we all want? • What we offer to Business School Students • What are the benefits of doing work experience • What does the research say? Outcomes • Share with each other how students are given credit for work experience within the curriculum and ideas of encouraging more students to take up these options.
- 3. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Employers say: Year on year that graduates do not have the necessary skills to meet the needs of business.
- 4. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL What students say:
- 5. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL What Universities want: Seek to ensure that their graduates are equipped with the right skills, self awareness, and business acumen employers want.
- 6. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Work opportunities Sandwich placement A placement equivalent of a year’s academic study (45-52 weeks). Typically taken by undergraduate students as the penultimate year of their programme. All students have the option to add a 12 month work opportunity to their three year degree programme they are enrolled on. Internships / Vacation placements A short term placement opportunity usually offered and advertised by employers and through the school, although may also be secured through a speculative application. Taken by students at any level of study in a vacation time or part time during an academic year. Only final year Business Management or International Business Management can gain credits for there work experience through an option module called Business Internship Programme module. Volunteering Voluntary roles generally advertised by our Active Volunteers department. Taken by all students from all levels of study, completing a few hours per week or during vacation. Majority of our level 5 students have the chance to gain 30 hours of certified volunteering as it is integrated within a core module.
- 7. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Work Opportunities Employability and Enterprise Award Employability and Enterprise Awards is a way for students to gain recognition for their skills and experience. All student have the opportunity to obtain an award. We have integrated the award criteria into the level 5 Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation module, as it includes activities which can be used as evidence for the award, the voluntary work can be used towards the numbers hours required for the award. Semester or Year Abroad When a student opts to study at an overseas HEI which has collaborative / reciprocal agreement with their home HEI, this could include a period of work or may be study only or both. This may be part of, or additional to, their degree e.g. ERASMUS scheme. We offer our students dual degree upon the complete of a years study at Metropolia University in Helsinki, this includes a minimum of a 6 months work placement.
- 8. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL • All students are encouraged to take up work opportunities. • They are informed of all the benefits of doing work experience, for example: – it improves academic performance – it could fast track them onto the employers graduate scheme • We do receive a good response from promotional activity, so why is it when students are asked to engage with the opportunities they lack commitment? Getting the message across
- 9. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL The Press are telling us: “ Record number of jobs are going to students with experience with employer” (Mail online, 14 January 2013 )
- 10. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL The Graduate Market in 2013: The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers: •Over half state “not very likely/not at all likely” to recruit a graduate with no work experience (irrespective of the academic results) •36% of 2013 entry level vacancies will be filled by applicants who have already worked for the organisation as an undergraduate; in some sectors this is over 50%
- 11. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Why don’t they see the benefits? We hear different reasons to why students do not go onto to do a placement. Some not uncommon to the reasons researched highlighted: •Time pressures of applications, •Uncertainty of securing a placement, •Strong peer pressure to opt out, •Difficulties in finding a placement close to their university or parents home (Wilson 2012)
- 12. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL Discussion • What work options do you offer in your School or HEI • How can we get students to really understand and reap the benefits that override the barriers? • What is the secret to making students commit to a work option?
- 13. WOLVERHAMPTON BUSINESS SCHOOL References • CBI/NUS(2011) “Working Towards your future: making the most of your time in higher education” Http://educationandskills.cbi.org.uk/reports • Wilson.T (2012) “ A Review of Business–University Collaboration” https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/32383/12-610-wilson-review-business-university- collaboration.pdf • High Fliers (2013) “The Graduate Market in 2013” http://www.highfliers.co.uk/download/GMReport13.pdf
Editor's Notes
- 79% of students surveyed for CBI NUS student guide 2011 indicated that they went into HE to improve their job opportunities.
- We are not unlike any other university we strive for the 95% plus of graduates to be employed, in PG /professional education or training after 6 months of leaving. We know that skills are not just going to developed through the degree studied or the university attended, personal skills can be developed through social and family background, extra curricular activities that undergraduates do during their time at University has an impact on their future. So to enable our graduates to be competitive in the world of work we offer many opportunities to our students with the aim to develop and boost their skills. Some opportunities are credit bearing others offer the chance to enhance their CV’s. the next slides outline what the business school offer our students, I have focussed on those that are credit bearing and have links with modules.
- Placements are key to enhancing our students employability we offer several opportunities for students to apply to, deliver workshops to help prepare for placements and the recruitment process and are available for one to one guidance at anytime. Students gain 40 credits once they have completed their placement, met the criteria of the module by successfully completing the assessments. Business Internship Programme Module where students employment setting is used as a contextual focus for the students learning, reflecting on retrospective work experience gain recognition for their skills developed and gain 20 credits through the module. Although there is a caveat that its has to be fairly recent work experience and have completed a minimum of number of hours. Students reflect on there experience, role, skills and look at current areas of development and review company details etc. We can only offer this option module to International Business Management and Business Management courses as they provide the flexibility to include this module. Volunteering experience can be acknowledge through the module Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation, if students have not participated in voluntary work before, this is a good introduction. After gaining an insight some students continue to volunteer as they see the importance of their activities and the benefits to their self development and for their CV.
- Employability and Enterprise award To ensure that a chunk of our students have some recognition for the work experience whether that is the voluntary work, part time work, internship we have integrated the award into the module . My colleague from Careers and Employment services and I work as team with module staff to deliver the programme. The module work they are completing can be used as evidence for the award, also the skills they are developing through this module through activities and voluntary work marries up to the context of the award. the students gain 20 credits for the module, they have certified voluntary work which goes on their record also they can gain an employability award. They are required to complete an additional 30 hours of work experience which can be achieved by continuing to do voluntary work, using part time work or a future placement or internship. The Employability award can be taken up by any student for those that do not cover the module we encourage that they do the award. Erasmus and placements Some students that have opted to go to Helsinki to experience a years study and have undertaken a 6 months placement and over that last two or three years students that have opted to do Erasmus have either extended the 6 months placement or do two placements. We currently have student that is in Bali working and is currently seeking their second placement in France, and has two interviews this week. Fingers crossed. They opt to do this as they see the benefit of the sandwich programme and are generally more confident in doing something like this as they have made the decision and experienced living in a different country and studied at an overseas university and have had to adapt to new environments, new people and ways of teaching. They already have plan in there mind about their employability.
- Are students are informed about the options available to them before they start university at open days, during university at inductions though student newsletters, social media, emails, class visits etc. We invite previous placement students to talk about their experiences, which engages students, have videos of previous placement students Benefits We know that there is evidence that placements, internships and other work experience is extremely valuable to students for academic performance and employability skills. Students that do placement mostly leave university with a 2:1 or 1St degree classification. Much research has been gathered about this via the likes of Rawlings et al 2005, Mandilaras (2004), Gomez et al. (2004) . We can also so see from our student results and behaviour in their final year. we see a confidence within them that was not there before. An abundance of practical knowledge and skills to take forward in the world of work as a graduate. Some students have lined up their graduate job due to their performance on there placement or internship. And we know that the lack off work experience is a barrier in securing employment. Response We do receive a good response from promotional activity however once asked to engage and follow through it is very hard for them commit. So why is it after hearing the good things that can happen from doing a placement/internship, why don’t they commit? why is it they don’t see the benefits? Especially as press are saying, research is saying……. How do other Universities keep the momentum of interest?
- With headlines like these across many papers you would hope it would make me more determined to do so.
- Over half the recruiters of Top 100 companies warned:
- Do we make it too easy for them to opt out of: If they were to enrol from the very beginning on a four year sandwich programme that includes the compulsory placement would we still have the same barriers? We provide an optional placement year which can be added to a 3 year programme. Reserch has also highlighted that there has been a decline in practice in recent years from 9.5 % to 7.2% in 2009/10, only a small number of Universities provide the majority of sandwich placements it is those that have the traditional sandwich courses. E.g. Aston University Loughborough University , university of Surrey
- Given what is going on in the economy, the press reports on graduate jobs, employer research, placement research, placement students overview of their experiences and what students surveyed have said why are student not seeing the benefits? I open it up to you for discussion