Strada Education Foundation reposted this
Bestselling author | Strategic advisor on future of learning and work | College admissions and early career expert | Contributor, The Atlantic | Angel investor | Editor, Next newsletter | Co-host, FutureU podcast
Internships are a critical cog in the wheel of getting to a full-time job after college. But the opportunity to land a good internship is not evenly distributed as Stephen Moret and I laid out recently in this Fast Company piece (https://lnkd.in/ev4pcNdi). 30 years ago this week, I ended my first college internship at U.S. News & World Report. Each weekday morning, along with half a dozen other interns, I reported to a small, windowless room in the basement of a sleek office building on N Street in Washington, DC. From there, we would all stare at monochrome computer monitors as we made phone call after phone call to college campuses around the country. Our task was to track down missing numbers, or in other cases, double-check questionable figures for the massive data collection that composed the secret sauce for the magazine’s annual college rankings guide. It was often a thankless task made better only by the camaraderie of twentysomethings, the stories we’d sometimes get to help out with for the magazine, and of course, the paycheck (when so many internships are unpaid). My counterparts that summer (pictured below with Robert Morse, the guru of the rankings) were from colleges all over, but mostly those that occupied the top of the U.S. News rankings that year: Princeton, Yale, UNC, Brown, Colby among others. I always wondered why an undergrad from Ithaca College was chosen. Years later, a mentor from that summer, Al Sanoff, told me that he had known the president at Ithaca at the time, James Whalen. Whalen was on several national boards, including in higher ed and with the NCAA. Because of that, Whalen had visited with U.S. News editors on occasion. So when my application crossed the editor's desk, he thought about Whalen. It wasn't the ranking of the school that mattered as much, but reputation still played a role in some way. Would love to hear from you below how might we get more students valuable (paid) internships where the ranking (or the reputation) of the school doesn't matter as much as the skills, talent, and grit of the student?
This is a terrific story! President Whalen was charming, charistmatic, persistent, memorable, and an incredible advocate of and for IC students in so many ways.
My supervisor at my first internship was David Carr. This was long before he became a NYT legend, back during his "Night of the Gun" days in the Twin Cities. It made for a fascinating internship. I was exposed to a lot of things that most interns probably are not.
Jeff, I was just praising you in my #ucirvine Principles of Educational Consulting course. I concur that internships provide invaluable training, soft skill exposure and the entry-level work that is both edifying and indispensable for rising in any field.
To me, this is a tricky thing. I am all for internships. However, I read this article once where it mentioned that 30-40 years ago, university research was seen as the best because it was not either biased or as biased as research coming from companies. Now, it would seem that universities and colleges are all too welcome to have companies' influence on their campus. Again, I am all for internships. We need a lot more, and we need a lot more of them to be paid. But, one of the issues that doesn't get talked about a lot is this: are universities/colleges becoming basically souped-up job training campuses, or, should we be wanting colleges and universities to be producing well-rounded leaders and employees who can work and lead with human dignity and empathy but also knowledgeable about their fields and finances as well? Basically, would schools become mass-production centers, or places of individual thought and creativity?
Great story, Jeff. To your question, I think the cheat code to accomplish this is Micro-Internships, not as a replacement for the traditional paid summer internship, but as a pathway. Specifically, traditional internships still remain relatively high-cost (money and time) endeavors for employers where they have very few signals to make a decision. Or, as one college student described it to me, it's like getting "engaged" before going on a "date." This makes the solution relatively simple - create a way for employers and students to go on job dates. Not job shadows, day in the life, or mentoring (all useful, but these are like looking as the dating site profile), but rather real, paid, short-term assignments that are similar to what an intern would be doing. As a result, employers no longer need to rely on the non-predictive signals of academic pedigree (ie school, GPA, major) or network connections, but rather can offer these "engagements" based upon demonstrated skills. To those who think this might be difficult, Parker Dewey has almost ten years of data with companies large and small showing it doesn't need to be, and we designed our entire #MicroInternships platform with this goal in mind.
Jeff Selingo thank you for another great post. I am reminded of the model used by my alma mater to create internships sponsored by alumni: • College career office hosted an intern/opportunity match with hundreds of sponsors. • Alumni secured approval from her/his company to sponsor an internship. • Applicants were ranked by the sponsor and then the college career office made the match across all prospective interns and company sponsors to create as many matches as possible. My first job out of school was with the company I interned at as a freshman. Years later, I sponsored an intern who used that experience to validate her career path. This pay it forward model creates hundreds of internship opportunities every year.
Nice origin story, and familiar! 😀⌨️💻For me, there are so many threads to follow, in terms of where our thinking has been. We talk about a lot of this in our book — and the students featured in the book come from no-name #colleges, yet still successful. Hey, Ned! https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12921/hacking-college
Interesting experiment: redact the school name on the resume and just evaluate substance of experience/skills.
Assistant Vice President, Student Affairs/Fannie Mitchell Executive Director, Career Center at Duke University
2moJeff Selingo great stuff (as always). Both thought provoking and inspiring. Quick clarifying question for you...when you say "paid" internship do you include internships that might not come with pay from the internship site but are supported through other funding sources, i.e. internship funding from the university? Or do you mean paid by the organization in which the student is interning?