The Placement Generation

A survey by HIS Higher Education Information System of more than 10,000 former students of all disciplines and types of degrees who left higher education in 2005 provides the first representative nation-wide data on post-graduation internships.

The main findings of the study: even if the number of post-graduation internships has increased in the past, they are not a mass phenomenon at present; the term "intern generation" is not justified in view of where the graduates end up working.

However, the distribution of internships does vary widely between different degree courses and different branches of industry. The evaluation of post-graduation internships is largely positive; relatively few graduates regarded them as exploitation. Nevertheless, some internships do create a substantial degree of dissatisfaction and are apparently mainly intended to use the interns as cheap temporary labour.

Roughly one in eight graduates from Fachhochschule and roughly one in seven graduates from university took a position as an intern following graduation. In some disciplines, e.g. in technical subjects and the natural sciences, a post-graduation internship is unusual. The disciplines in which graduates work as an intern relatively frequently following graduation include biology and economic sciences. Roughly a quarter of graduates in languages and cultural sciences and a fifth of psychology graduates do one or more internships following graduation. Most frequently, graduates with a masters degree go on to work as interns (34%).

There are few instances of people doing serial internships or making careers of internships: only around a tenth of Fachhochschule graduates who did an internship following graduation, and around a fifth of university graduates with internship experience, went on to do two or more internships. The average number of internships – in terms of the subset of those graduates who do an internship at all – was 1.1 (Fachhochschule) and 1.2 (university); if one considers all graduates, the figures drop to 0.14 (Fachhochschlue) and 0.19 (university). The duration of internships is generally not excessive: around half of all interns did an internship or internships of three months maximum. In the case of a further third, the total duration of internships was between four and six months, and only very few have internship experience lasting a year or more.

Evaluation of the internships

The majority are happy with their internships – in particular with the level of the work and the instructional value of the internship. Around two-thirds assessed the level as very good or good (university 65 %, Fachhochschule 67 %); the figures for instructional value are slightly higher (university 70 %, Fachhochschule 69 %). Rates of satisfaction about pay were much lower. No data are available about absolute pay levels for interns, but the very different views taken of this aspect suggest that there are tangible differences in the remuneration of interns:

34 percent of university and 17 percent of Fachhochschule graduates received no pay at all for their internship; a further third of Fachhochschule graduates described the pay as (very) bad – the figure for university graduates saying this is 29 percent – and even fewer deemed it (very) good (university 22%, Fachhochschule 28%). The remaining 15 (university) and 23 (Fachhochschule) percent regarded their pay as satisfactory.

A comparison of the distribution of interns and graduates in jobs across the economy suggests that some sectors tend to be especially "intern-intensive". According to this, in addition to the category known as "other services", the press, radio and television, as well as art and culture, are the more intensive users of interns. The latter sectors recruit comparatively high numbers of university graduates as interns. The same goes for university graduates in publishing, and for Fachhochschule graduates in the construction sector. On the other hand, it is relatively rare for graduates to be taken on as interns in the health sector, schools or higher education institutions.

Conclusion: the internship is far from being the normal start to a career. Problems in starting out in work probably manifest themselves in other ways – e.g. in the form of temporary contracts, jobs uncommensurate with qualifications, and/or poor pay. HIS has examined these questions in the past; they are also being covered by the current survey.