{"id":149,"date":"2022-12-05T18:06:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T18:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/sebe\/?p=149"},"modified":"2022-12-05T18:06:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-05T18:06:00","slug":"working-towards-a-measurement-of-internship-placement-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.gre.ac.uk\/sebe\/working-towards-a-measurement-of-internship-placement-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Towards A Measurement Of Internship Placement Value\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ronald Gibson and Raluca Marinciu<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current neo-liberal valuation of higher education views universities as the provider of labour market resources and improved student job prospects for those undertaking a business subject (Green, Hammer and Star, 2009; Holmes, 2013; Tomlinson, 2012; Tymon, 2013). Employability literature debates the postmodern internship as the answer to prepare students for work (Gault et al., 2000),<\/strong> gain transferable skills (Hillman and Rotham, 2007) and improve long-term employability (Hergert, 2009). However, <\/strong>not all internships are created equal, or lead to graduate level employment. In this piece we are referring to an internship as being a minimum of nine months of work experience, which can also be identified as a \u2018placement year\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

There is a <\/strong>gap in understanding how internships translate into graduate outcome high-skilled roles (GOHS), what impact a university has on achieving them, and how to forecast whether an internship will lead to a graduate role. This blog post follows from a presentation at the 2022 University of Greenwich Learning and Teaching Festival and proposes a study to develop an internship value metric through an employer survey to support the understanding of how an internship can contribute towards a student successfully securing a GOHS in the market as measured by the Office for Students (OfS) Graduate Outcomes (GO) survey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Universities have been critiqued for their inability to teach students the soft skills required to be successful in the workplace (Gault et al., 2000) and instead have been blamed for a skills gap shortage in the labour market (Hillman and Rotham, 2007). To address this deficiency, business schools have begun to incorporate internships so that students can learn specific job-related skills.\u202f\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is very little research available in understanding the ultimate correlation between internships and students gaining the required skills to enter the graduate job market and be successful in the workplace. Our proposal to develop an internship value metric is a solution to shed light on the skills learned within an internship. This will contribute to creating a framework that universities can use to evaluate skills development and the effect on the graduate career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a graduate outcome is calculated <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Graduate outcomes are calculated by the annual GO survey held 1.5 years post-graduation. While there is a list of questions asked of students, the main question, and the one that is publicly reported for universities, is the percentage of students who are deemed to be in a high-skilled graduate role. The first question asked is \u2018job title\u2019 followed by probing questions of skills used in the role. If the job title matches the SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) code for a high-skilled role, and the skills used match those expected in that role according to the ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) skills description, the graduate is considered to be in a GOHS role. This outcome is determined by the student\u2019s ability to clearly state the role and the skills used.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance of graduate outcome position<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OfS places pressure on universities to examine and improve the outcomes of graduates, deeming those with low graduate outcomes as poor-value. Pressures are then placed on university senior management to fix the measured outcome through employability supports, reduce student numbers on the poor-value programme (Morgan, 2022),<\/strong> or remove the programme altogether, which is currently strangling many arts programmes (Weale, 2022). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As graduate outcomes are an important measurement in the UK TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) and LTR (League Table Ranking), the ability of students to attain graduate roles directly affects a university\u2019s brand value. The higher the percentage of graduate outcomes,\u202fthe higher ranked the school on the LTR. In our analysis there are some outliers, for example institutions focusing on the arts versus those who have higher enrolments in professional programmes such as health and social care. Those with programmes with direct routes to skilled employment are bound to have a higher graduate outcome result while those who have a variance of job title have lower GOHS outcomes. The universities for this study were chosen as a sample representative of the type of higher education institutions currently operating in the UK market, including Russell Group and top universities, universities similar to University of Greenwich in terms of programmes offered, and specialist universities where a trend in graduate outcomes can be identified. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 1 Graph of graduate outcomes on league table ranking<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Students use LTR to choose the \u2018better\u2019 school to attend (Hemsley-Brown and Oplatka, 2015) and employers use LTR to determine the skill level of a new hire (Christie, 2017). League table ranking then is marketing the value of the credential and is driven by the OfS graduate outcome survey results.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developing a metric that supports skill measurement <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To develop a measurement tool, we first need to understand the areas of skills values sought in the graduate labour market, categorising these into graduate variable clusters. We propose to begin with the seven values theorised by Cattani and Pedrini (2021): knowledge (commercial acumen), skills, attitudes, values, working style, job description (activities) and working conditions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the business faculty we aim to create a learning contract agreement for internships. The aim is to improve graduate prospects, monitor those areas and improve understanding of our internship provision. Within the learning contract we plan to develop a skills\/task proficiency survey measuring the level of usage and level of each skill proficiency while on placement. Underlying this combination will be a weighted value intended to attribute value to graduate outcome skills. Higher total values would be assumed to increase the likelihood of skills usage and attractiveness in high-skilled positions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a concern on deciding skill weights and on rubric proficiency level cut-offs. While for software proficiency it may be easy to determine differences of skill level, more subjective skills such as communication or personal values will be difficult to determine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Figure 2 A Skills\/Task Based Metric to Measure Placement Value to Predict our Graduate Outcomes: example of Excel Skill<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the figure above, the example shown would read as weekly low proficiency, yearly medium proficiency and no high proficiency, equating to a weighted score of 10\/30. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research design <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process of development has used an exploratory approach. Previous research on placements has concentrated on binary outcomes, and the data focuses on whether a student participates in a placement or not but does not take the quality of the placement into account. Due to the lack of a study analysing the relationship between the quality of student placements and their graduate outcomes, we aim to employ an exploratory method to identify the significant factors (Cohen et al., 2017). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our plan of action in developing the metric and survey is to: <\/p>\n\n\n\n