Study On Legal Status Of College Students Participating In Internship Program

As market-oriented economy gains momentum and college education system deepens, college expansion of enrollment makes sharpen increase in the number of college students. As a result, employment is getting more challenging for undergraduates. Occupational history is one of the leverages of getting more employment chances. Applying theories learned in school to practice and production, internship not only helps students accumulate job experience, but is a crucial part of practice courses of universities. For vocational colleges, which account for almost half of higher education institutions in China, student practice is even an essential link of their teaching plans. Internship gives college students more social experience, and what’s more, it makes them more competitive on the grim job market.Teaching practice is the traditional model of internship; nevertheless, it is getting diversified as the education system remodels and market-oriented economy develops. For example, paid internship, job attachment and replacement internship have emerged as very different practice models. Increasing internship models and number of interns leave more frequent harm to interns’ legal rights and interests in recent years, but current Chinese laws have no clear definitions on whether college students are labors in sense of labor law and whether interns have legal labor relationship their recipient. Consequentially, there is a debate in academic circles, and judicial authorities even give such similar cases opposite verdicts.In an effort to define the legal relationship between interns and the organization of internship, scholars’ opinions on interns’ legal status, relevant legal articles, foreign definition standard on labors’ status and labor relationship are analyzed in this thesis. Also, some foreign internship laws and regulations are consulted here. This thesis consists of four chapters. In Chapter I, two similar cases ending with different verdicts are quoted, and then definition of interns’ legal status is raised. Chapter Ⅱ focuses on exploring the way for defining the conception of labor as far as Chinese and foreign labor laws concerned, and it also analyzes the standard of establishing labor relationships, legal relationships of interns and their recipient as well as legal status of interns. Comparison between Chinese and foreign internship systems is made in Chapter Ⅲ, and the comparison gives inspiration of finding solutions to the problem of college students’practice. In Chapter IV, some ideas on labor security system concerning college interns are given, and some suggestions on improving internship system are proposed. This thesis argues that legislation should be improved to establish an internship system involving in government, enterprises and colleges.