Previous Next Title Page Contents Bailey, T., Hughes, K., & Barr, T. (1998). Achieving scale and quality in school-to-work internships: Findings from an employer survey (MDS-902). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.


LITERATURE REVIEW

       Research on employer participation in work-based learning falls into two broad categories. The first includes theoretical discussions about employer participation and for the most part these tend to be somewhat pessimistic. Although there are some reasons why employers might see participation to be in their interests, most theoretical discussions conclude that, on balance, the costs and disadvantages for most employers would outweigh the benefits. The second type of research consists of empirical studies, most of which are case studies of school-to-work programs which include some attention to the problems of employer recruitment. These tend to be somewhat more optimistic, reporting that employers are happy with the experiences and indeed that the student interns usually have exceeded the employers' expectations. One recent study that attempted to measure the costs and benefits of participation in a small number of individual firms did find that on average, the benefits outweighed the costs. A small number of the empirical studies involve surveys of participating employers and these have mixed conclusions about the feasibility of widespread participation.

Theoretical Arguments

       The theoretical arguments behind the issue of employer participation in work-based learning programs are presented in the articles in Learning to Work: Employer Involvement in School-to-Work Transition Programs (Bailey, 1995b). Bailey outlines a framework of three types of motivation which may affect employers' decisions to participate in school-to-work programs: (1) philanthropic, (2) individual, and (3) collective.


Philanthropic

       Employers may decide to provide work-based learning placements for philanthropic or altruistic reasons such as to reach out to the community or to help youth. While philanthropic motivations have clearly been important in getting the school-to-work movement going, it is not clear how large a work-based learning system could be sustained based primarily on philanthropic motivations. Bailey (1995a) suggests that purely philanthropic motivation is probably not adequate to sustain a large and intensive system.


Individual Motivation

       Alternatively, employers may decide to become a school-to-work partner for individual reasons such as participation is seen to bring benefits to the particular firm. For example, student interns may be of use to individual firms as short-term, no-cost or low-cost labor; they may act as temporary help. Employers as part of their long-term labor recruitment strategy may also use work-based learning programs. If student interns can be groomed to become future permanent employees, firm recruitment costs may be reduced. However, the low monetary cost of student interns is often offset by the high supervisory cost of having such interns. In addition, the goal of having youth continue on into some type of postsecondary education may reduce the employer incentives to train interns.[2] Osterman (1995) argues that there are "intangible costs" of "the opposition of the adult labor force to the extensive use of cheap youth labor in a context of broad economic insecurity" (p.79). He contends that "the prospects for widespread employer participation seem bleak" (p.79).

       Klein's (1995) paper "Employer Incentives To Participate in a National School-to-Work Initiative" is an attempt to evaluate the economic incentives for employer participation, despite the lack of empirical research available. Incentives are organized into three areas of concern: (1) effects on business climate, (2) impact on organizational efficiency, and (3) cost of program participation. According to Klein, classical economic theory would suggest little reason for firms to participate in these programs. He states that "the incentive for profit-maximizing firms to sponsor training is nearly indistinguishable from charitable giving when students' productivity fails to offset their cost to the firm" (p.3). If program participation is not mandatory, employers who have not participated may induce recently trained student-workers to leave the firms in which they were trained.

       It is interesting that none of these discussions emphasizes the effects of the business cycle. Indeed, many of these analyses were written in the early 1990s when unemployment was relatively high. But the low unemployment levels of 1997 and 1998 may have both strengthened the incentives for employers to participate and reduced the fear of displacement among adult workers.


Collective Motivation

       Finally, there are collective reasons for employer participation, which Bailey (1995b) believes are potentially stronger than the philanthropic or individual ones. Bailey states that "one of the most common arguments for improving education in the United States is that employers lack a skilled workforce" (p.20). The collective perspective is that while companies might not benefit immediately or directly from their own student interns, the broad implementation of school-to-work would strengthen the labor supply for all. Work-based education should help to develop a more skilled labor force overall, which should be an incentive for firms to participate. The problem with this argument is that it requires some mechanism to overcome free rider problems. Firms will be reluctant to train the future workforce if they expect that their competitors will benefit by "poaching" trained workers. This requires some sort of employer organization or consortium or even legislation that can at least socialize the cost of the training or increase the chances that employers who spend resources on training will also have access to a trained labor force. Such a system exists in the unionized construction industry, but that involves a level of labor market regulation that is unlikely to be politically acceptable in the U.S. Thus, while a collective motivation could potentially be very important, this country seems to lack the institutional structure that could make it effective.

       Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.'s study of the School-to-Work Transition/ Youth Apprenticeship Demonstration sites (Corson & Silverberg, 1994; Hershey & Silverberg, 1993) is a preliminary look at the implementation of these programs. They describe a wide variety of roles that employers have taken in these programs, some of which involve a considerable outlay of resources. The researchers differentiate between the employers providing real jobs versus structured skill instruction to students, and argue that the burden placed on employers can be reduced if they can choose one or the other, and not be asked to supply both (as in traditional apprenticeship programs). The Mathematica researchers are not optimistic about the possibility of implementing youth apprenticeships on a large scale because "the challenge of combining employment and a structured program of workplace training is a substantial burden on employers" (Hershey & Silverberg, 1993, p.9).

       Overall, while there are some potential benefits for employers to participate in school-to-work programs, especially when unemployment is low, the theoretical arguments tend to be pessimistic. Benefits are balanced against real costs, and the chance that the trainees will leave (especially as school-to-work advocates its importance in preparing students for college) further reduces the benefits.


Empirical Evidence Regarding Employer Incentives and Disincentives

       The scarce empirical evidence, on the other hand, tends to be somewhat more optimistic. This work consists primarily of case studies in which program operators are interviewed to elicit information about recruiting employers. Some analysts have also conducted small scale interviews with participating and nonparticipating employers. Finally, a few surveys (with moderate sample sizes) of participating employers have also been carried out. Moreover, almost all of the studies reported here were conducted either before the 1994 passage of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, or so soon after its enactment that it would be unlikely that the Act would have had an effect.

       In focus groups of employers in eight communities who were not participating in work-based learning programs, the National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce found that the absence of labor demand was an important disincentive for these firms to participate (Zemsky, 1994). The larger firms were consumed with "making their enterprises more competitive: leaner, more focused, less engaged in community projects" (p.4), while the smaller firms had plenty of access to older, trained workers and saw no need to hire and train young people. (These employers might have had a different view, though, if they had faced the low unemployment rates of 1997 and 1998.) Some of the businesses also cited concern about students' communication skills. Yet while these employers who were not participating in such programs characterized them in negative ways in focus groups, surveys of participating employers found them to be quite positive about their involvement with students. The participating employers surveyed by telephone found school-to-work to be beneficial to themselves as well as to the students, and said they would sign up more students and would recommend participation to other business owners. The study's authors' suggested pitch to employers is, "Try it, you'll like it" (p. 8). Agreeing with this conclusion, researchers from Jobs for the Future believe that "once employers get involved in working closely with schools and young people, they tend to become more rather than less committed to intensive efforts" (Kazis & Goldberger, 1995, p. 188).

       Case studies of internships or apprenticeships in eight companies were carried out by the American Society for Training and Development with funding from the National Employment Leadership Council (Bassi, Feeley, Hillmeyer, & Ludwig, 1997). The purpose of the study was to evaluate the costs and benefits to the participating companies. The benefits included the value of student labor, reduced training and recruitment costs, higher productivity of students hired as regular employees compared with other entry-level employees, improved community relations, improved productivity and morale of workers, and increased diversity in the workplace. The costs included expenses for the development and administration of the programs, the time of supervisors and mentors who work with the students, intern salaries, and miscellaneous costs such as tools. While many of the benefits were difficult to quantify, the study found clear net benefits from participation for three of the six firms. Three others were found to have net costs in the short-term, yet the authors suggest these might be outweighed by hard-to-measure long-term gains. One of the six companies had discontinued its program because of high costs and company personnel policies which restricted the eventual hiring of student apprentices--thus preventing the firm from benefiting from reduced training and recruitment costs in the long term.

       In surveys of employers, facilitation of employee recruitment has been found to be a major incentive to participate in work-based learning programs. In a 1995 survey of 73 employers involved in 15 school-to-work transition programs carried out by the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) (1995) (54 were currently participating employers; 19 were former participants), nearly two-thirds of employers cited recruitment goals as the most important reason for their participation. Only one-quarter chose educational and community improvement goals as their most important reason for participating, although three-fourths said these goals were a "strong" or "primary" benefit of involvement (p.84). These findings are summarized as follows: "the self-interested goals of recruitment are more important to employers--but not greatly so--than philanthropic goals of improving education and the community" (p.85).

       The two motivations of philanthropy and employee recruitment were also found to be most salient by researchers Lynn and Wills (1994). Their telephone survey of 224 employers participating in cooperative education in 18 high schools in six different metropolitan areas found that the "two overarching reasons why employers participate are to perform a community service or to recruit entry-level workers" (p.28). More than half of the employers reported that they retained students in their firms after the program had ended. The larger employers in particular stated they were concerned about performing a community service and in doing so, projecting a positive image in the community. Nevertheless, more than 25% of all the employers stated that they saw involvement in the program as a way to fill part-time positions and to get lower-paid part-time help. Because of this benefit, and the employee screening functions the schools perform, the authors of this study state that "employer responses indicate that these arrangements are a `good deal' for the employer" (p.31).

Home-Grown Lessons by Pauly, Kopp, and Haimson (1995) is a comprehensive report on sixteen school-to-work programs. When program staff were asked to identify the most important factors which influence employers to participate, the top factor was philanthropy: "interest in helping the students and the local community" (p. 171). However, employers from different industries varied in their responses. While hospitals were interested in helping the health care sector in general and gaining positive public relations from their involvement, manufacturing firms were more interested in the recruitment benefits they could gain.

       Researchers from Jobs for the Future agree that employers can benefit through program-assisted employee screening and recruitment, although "how many recruiting successes they need for the program to be worthwhile will vary by industry, firm size, and the level of commitment a firm makes to a given program" (Goldberger & Kazis, 1995, p. 29). They have found that "industries such as metalworking, health care, and printing, whose firms are experiencing shortages in skilled entry-level personnel, or which anticipate shortages in the future, are already proving to be more receptive to new strategies for finding qualified young people for entry-level jobs" (Kazis & Goldberger, 1995, p. 187). Through their work with a variety of school-to-career programs around the country, Jobs for the Future has found another way firms can profit by their participation in these programs, relating that "participating employers report unanticipated benefits to existing workers who supervise and mentor young people. Improved management skills, greater enjoyment of their jobs (and hence, better employee retention), and increased attention to improving their own skills development are frequently mentioned by workers and employers" (Goldberger & Kazis, 1995, pp. 29-30; also see Klein, 1995).


Overall Success with Recruitment and Retention

       A study of LaGuardia Community College, a twenty-six year-old postsecondary cooperative education program, shows that "it is possible to maintain an internship program involving thousands of placements and hundreds of employers" (Wieler & Bailey, 1997, p. 137). Although the LaGuardia program predated the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, Wieler and Bailey argue that its original design is consistent with the Act's guidelines. An examination of employer participation in LaGuardia's program over time (the researchers obtained information on every LaGuardia internship placement between 1984 and 1995) shows that retention of participating employers is very important, perhaps even more important than recruitment, and needs further study. LaGuardia faculty believe employer self-interest motivates their participation, meaning that employers are primarily interested in the screened, inexpensive, or altogether free labor they receive through the program. Another point of interest brought out in the study is how local economic conditions can be very influential regarding the ease or difficulty of employer recruitment and retention. Local recessions make employer recruitment more difficult, and negatively affect employers' willingness to pay students for their internships.

       Jobs for the Future's National Youth Apprenticeship Initiative, a study of ten programs around the country from 1991 to 1994, presents promising findings regarding employer participation. While most of the programs began with a focus in one industry, almost all increased the number of industries and occupational areas served over time. The report "Promising Practices" states that

the programs have significant and sustained employer involvement, and the intensity of employer involvement has increased over time. . . . While a few programs have had difficulty securing the involvement of sufficient numbers of employers in specific occupational areas due to local economic conditions, most have succeeded in identifying an initial core of employers willing to provide structured work-based learning opportunities and to participate as full partners in designing and managing the initiative. (Kopp & Kazis, 1995, p. 10)

       Lynn and Wills (1994) found that across the sites studied, "school staff tended to indicate that employer recruitment was not a significant problem and that there were generally enough employer slots for the referral of eligible students" (p. 23). There was, however, some problem with turnover; again, retention needs more attention. Home-Grown Progress (Pedraza, Pauly, & Kopp, 1997), the follow-up study to Home-Grown Lessons, finds that the 16 programs have been sustained and have successfully recruited more employer partners.

       By contrast, the findings of a report by OTA (1995) regarding employer recruitment were more negative. The survey found that, using the equivalent of one-half of a full-time staff person's time, "the median growth rate of employer participation in the 15 programs in the past two years has been six employers per year, "which "translated into a median increase of 11 students per year in the 15 programs" (emphasis the authors') (p.76). With a growth rate of only 14% a year, and given the small starting sizes of these programs, the authors of this report believe that "many years will be required for school-to-work transition systems to reach substantial proportions of all the students in the school districts in which those systems are located" (p.77). However, it is possible that with the passage of the School-to-Work Opportunities Act, and the increase of knowledge about and interest in school-to-work programs, a higher rate of employer recruitment can be achieved.

       Thus, while the empirical work has not been universally optimistic, certainly some researchers have concluded that significant expansion is still possible. These conclusions emerge primarily from two observations. First, many employers are enthusiastic about their interns and cite a variety of benefits, especially after some experience with the students. This suggests that efforts may be made at initial recruitment with the expectation that subsequent participation will be more or less self perpetuating. Second, many of the programs, even some relatively large programs, have been able to find an adequate number of employer participants.

       But these can only be seen as preliminary conclusions. The empirical evidence is far from definitive. Studies that interview participants can generate many ideas and insights but do not contain the type of information that can help predict the chances of expansion. After all, the participants are a selected group of employers who are presumably well-disposed towards the programs. Employer dropouts or those who have rejected recruitment appeals do not appear in the studies of participants. The largest scale survey, even of participants, carried out by Lynn and Wills (1994) could also be somewhat misleading since it surveyed employers participating in traditional co-op programs. While these programs have formed the basis of many school-to-work efforts, they have generally been part of vocational education programs that, unlike the school-to-work model, have been designed to find employment for graduates in their area of study immediately after high school. Thus, many of the employers in the Lynn and Wills sample did hire their interns into permanent jobs on graduation. Current school-to-work efforts have a stronger focus on college preparation, so employers may not be encouraged to see school-to-work students as potential long-term employees.

       Therefore, while there is a growing research base for the study of employer participation, many questions remain unanswered. This report can expand our knowledge of the issue in two primary ways. First, our methodology allows a comparison between participating and nonparticipating employers. Any attempt to understand why firms participate, what the characteristics of participating firms are, and how nonparticipants might be recruited requires an investigation of both participating and nonparticipating firms. So far, only a very small number of studies have interviewed nonparticipants.[3] This study does allow a comparison. Second, previous studies have not explored the relationship between employer recruitment and program quality.

[2] In some cases, employers might encourage students to go on to college with some expectation that they might continue to work during college or return after graduation. Nevertheless, a system that emphasizes enrollment in college will reduce the probability that interns will become part of the firm's long-term workforce.

[3] The OTA (1995) study included only 19 former participants, while the EQW/Lynn-Wills study (Lynn & Wills, 1994; Zemsky, 1994) interviewed nonparticipants in focus groups while they conducted a formal survey of employers participating in co-op programs. Finally, a Census Bureau survey (Shapiro & Zemsky, 1996) of a random sample of firms asked whether firms participated in work-based learning programs and, therefore, did allow a comparison between those in the sample that did participate to those that did not. The Census Bureau conducted a follow up survey in 1997 and the results are reported by the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement (1997).

Previous Next Title Page Contents Bailey, T., Hughes, K., & Barr, T. (1998). Achieving scale and quality in school-to-work internships: Findings from an employer survey (MDS-902). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.
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