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Knocking on employment’s door: internships and job attainment

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Abstract

Undergraduate internships have gained popularity among students, universities, governments and firms since the creation of the European Higher Education Area. However, empirical research on the relationship between internships and labour market performance of graduates is still scarce, particularly in Spain. This paper examines whether internships improve job attainment in the short run (first employment after graduation) and in the medium/long term (employment 4 years later). We use the first Spanish University Graduate Job Placement Survey (2014) to estimate linear probability models and probit models. A novel econometric technique is also implemented to evaluate the sensitivity of our findings to omitted variable bias. We disentangle the internship effect on (i) the time it takes to find the first job; (ii) the vertical, horizontal and skills matching with the first job; (iii) being employed in the medium/long term; (iv) the vertical and horizontal matching with the current employment; and (v) wage quintiles of the current job. Our results show that internship experience facilitates the university-to-work transition for Spanish graduates. Although the effects of internships on being employed do not vanish in the medium/long term, there is weak evidence of positive effects on matching four years after graduation and no effects are found on wages.

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Notes

  1. There is no international agreement on the definition of internships. O´Higgins and Pinedo (2018) classify them into three categories: educational, open market internships and those undertaken as part of a publicly supported Active Market Labour Programme. This research focuses on the first type.

  2. These are the latest figures released by Eurostat (2019, Q4).

  3. More recently, Silva et al. (2018) examine internships before and after the implementation of the Bologna Declaration. They show that programmes including internships tend to significantly reduce the graduate unemployment rate.

  4. Aged between 16 and 24 years old.

  5. Despite being voluntary, there are some fields of study where curricular internships are more common. To control this fact, we have carried out a sample robustness check. We have estimated our models excluding those fields of study where more than 90% or less than 10% of students did an internship. The findings (available upon request) are very similar to those presented in the “Results” section of the paper.

  6. We have used the Stata command psacalc that accompanies the article (Oster, 2019).

  7. Short-cycle corresponds to 3-year programmes (Diplomaturas, Teacher training school, and Technical Engineering) and long-cycle refers to 5-year programmes (Licenciaturas) and 6-year programmes (Engineering, Architecture and Medicine). Specifically, 43% (54%) of our graduates have studied a short-cycle (long-cycle) programme.

  8. Around 5.9% of individuals never found a job after graduation.

  9. The corresponding δs are 3.68 and 2.54. That is, the degree of selection bias due to the unobservables should be more than three times larger than the degree of selection bias due to observables for the internship to show no effect.

  10. The corresponding δs are 2.2 and 2.85.

  11. The reason why the lower limit is higher that the coefficient is that the estimated effect is slightly larger with covariates than without them. Accordingly the δ does not make sense in this case (for Social Security, δ = 1.65).

  12. The bias due to unobservables should be 74% or lower than bias due to observables for the bias-adjusted effect to be positive.

  13. Graduates working abroad or on informal basis are excluded from this analysis. Thus, the estimation of internships effects on wages may suffer from sample selection bias. A correction of sample selection should be applied in order to extrapolate results to the whole population of students. Unfortunately, there is no proper identifier at our disposal to estimate such a model.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding through the Spanish Ministry of Science, Education and Universities [grant number ECO 2017-82445-R] and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [grant number ECO2016-76818-C3-3-P]. They also acknowledge the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) for helping with their queries. Moreover, they thank the helpful suggestions offered by the Editor and two anonymous reviewers. They also acknowledge useful comments received at presentations at a seminar at the University of Salamanca (Spain, 2020) as well as at the XXVIII Meeting of the Economics of Education Association (Spain, 2019). They also acknowledge the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) for helping with their queries. Moreover, they thank the helpful suggestions offered by the Editor and two anonymous reviewers. They also acknowledge useful comments received at presentations at a seminar at the University of Salamanca (Spain, 2020) as well as at the XXVIII Meeting of the Economics of Education Association (Spain, 2019).

Funding

This research was funded by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (ECO 2017-82445-R), and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2016-76818-C3-3-P)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic Analysis, (Complutense University of Madrid), ICAE and GRIPICO. Complutense University of Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain

    Gisela Di Meglio & Andrés Barge-Gil

  2. Department of Economic Analysis, (Complutense University of Madrid) and ICAE. Complutense University of Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain

    Ester Camiña

  3. Department of Economic Analysis, (Complutense University of Madrid) and GRIPICO, Complutense University of Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain

    Lourdes Moreno

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  1. Gisela Di Meglio
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Correspondence to Gisela Di Meglio.

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Di Meglio, G., Barge-Gil, A., Camiña, E. et al. Knocking on employment’s door: internships and job attainment. High Educ 83, 137–161 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00643-x

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