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.

PARTICIPATION RATES

       Many firms in the United States have been providing internships, apprenticeships, and other forms of work-based learning for many years. For example, there are several hundred thousand students in cooperative education programs. It is important to know how many employers are now participating in some form of internship. Our survey of nonparticipants does provide information that would allow us to make an estimate of the participation rate in the cities that we surveyed. Before interviewing respondents, we asked them if they were providing or had provided internships. (The screening questions and the response rates are presented in Appendix C.) Of the total of 468 establishments that responded to the screening question, 113 (24.1%) had provided internships. Table 1 displays the participation rates by size class. Clearly, the largest firms are much more likely to provide internships. Over 40% of the establishments in the labor markets covered in the survey provided internships, but even the smallest group of establishments (0-10 employees) had a participation rate of one in seven.

       Given the generally pessimistic tone of many previous discussions about the potential for widespread employer participation, these results appear to be surprisingly high. There are several reasons why these rates are higher than expected. First, we selected these cities because they already had large and well-established internship programs and it was difficult to find such programs in other cities. Second, the internships could include those for community college students as well; therefore, they are probably higher than they would have been if the question had been limited to internships for high school students. Third, many of these internships may not be as ambitious as those envisioned by school-to-work supporters. For example, they may have very little coordination between the school and the workplace experience. Nevertheless, the data does suggest that a substantial number of employers are already providing internships of some kind. The order of magnitude of the estimate is further supported by results from a 1997 national survey by the Census Bureau. The data from that survey suggests that about 20% of all establishments with 20 or more employees provided internships.[6]

[6] Unpublished data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census National Employer Survey II. For further information about this survey, see NCPI (1997).

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.