Employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship program

The purpose of this study was to explore employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs in order to establish a benchmark of local data. The findings aided career service practitioners in providing information to students, administrators, and departmental internship coordinators and assisted the university in improving and fine-tuning its internship program. A review of the literature revealed that overall, internship experience was beneficial to students, colleges, and employers. A survey instrument originally developed by Dr. Kane was utilized to seek information about employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs. The instrument was mailed to 468 local employers listed in the 2001 Greater Boise Employer Directory who had already established internship programs. Descriptive statistics were utilized to analyze the demographic information and employers' perceptions. Responses to the two open-ended comment questions were grouped into categories based on the themes that emerged from the data. Non-parametric tests were utilized to analyze the hypotheses. Over half of the employers either moderately agreed or strongly agreed with all of the statements with the exception of two statements. The open-ended comment question responses indicated areas in which college internship programs could be improved and also included general comments regarding employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs. There was one statistically significant finding from the four hypotheses. That finding was in employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs and the two sizes of organizations, "20 or fewer employees" and "21--99 employees." This finding showed that employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs ranked higher in the "21--99 employees" category. No statistically significant differences were found regarding the other two groups of sizes of organizations, which suggested that the differences between these other two groups of sizes of organizations did not seem to influence employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs. There were no statistically significant differences found in the other three hypotheses, which suggested that classifications of the employers' industry, profit classifications of the employers' industry, and the types of ownership of the organization did not seem to influence employers' perceptions of the benefits of college internship programs.