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Employer Quotes

The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Information Technology (IT)

They are talking about this topic: Educational Partnerships

 

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The quotes below are about this issue:
Respondents assert the importance of creating experiential learning partnerships. This means businesses and educational institutions working together to create a solid network of internships and other practical experiences for students to explore. Both businesses and higher education acknowledge challenges exist to creating such a system, but both sets of respondents demonstrate a genuine interest in creating something that would prove beneficial to all stakeholders.

Employer Quote Region
"I think that probably applies to everybody here—that you've got to have a job to help other people in a support role. That's the key. If you can have a class where it's mandatory, where students have got to work in the computer lab for 'X' number of hours, or whatever the case may be, that'd be good experience." Northwest
"I think for any degree in school, there should be an internship in whatever field you're going into and much less student teaching. An internship gives you not only a helpful perspective for future employment, but you know what you're getting into. And it gives you the opportunity—if you don't already have those skills—to develop those skills." Northwest
"Educator: Who decides? The employers help us make the decision. If the opportunities aren't there for the students to fulfill that internship...Again, students have very, very busy schedules, and they can be there this many hours, this many days. And the student pays tuition for the internship experience. Some employers do pay students on internship, but some do not. So, students will pick and choose. I think to make it better, we all have to work together. We have to be able to tell our students, 'Here is a list of companies that are willing to take you on as an intern.' And those companies have to be willing to be flexible. To contact each of the schools or institutions and tell us, 'These are the levels where we need the students to intern at.' And I think at the end of a program is too late for an intern. We've got students in our networking program, which is 78 credits for an associate's degree. At the end, they're already invested their money and their time in this degree, and then you send them on an internship and they decide, 'This isn't for me.' Now what do you do? They get upset with us because we took their money and didn't tell them the real story, you know? Successful internships take equal work on the part of the institution, the employers, and then the student as well. So, it depends on the network we can build for opportunities for our students. Again, I'm from the [MnSCU college] campus. Our IT program is on the [MnSCU college] campus, and I don't directly supervise that at this time, so I don't know what their internship relationships are, and it's sometimes difficult to motivate the student to go out and do this. Our IT director can tell you about getting students just to work in our computer labs as work/study for IT. Right there, they don't even have to leave the building." Northwest
"We need a really coordinated effort. What they do on the internship has to be applicable back to what they've learned in the classroom and vice versa. We've had people go out on internships and they think they're going to get on-the-job training and they end up being the PC jockey, you know? 'Go clean the monitors. Go swap out monitors.' So, it has to be that value-add for the student as well." Northwest
"I think it should be a requirement, an internship. If the students are not going to go get one, I'll tell you right now, it really reduces their chance at getting employed. We look for that internship every time. Now for an employer, internships a lot of times cost them money, whether they pay for it or not. And it's a hindrance to productivity and efficiency. So, to go out and have to put extra effort into getting those interns is counterproductive. I know, from our standpoint, we like to see students that take the initiative to come and present themselves. That internship might as well be a learning experience for an interview process. And once they're in, if they do get that grunt work—that PC jockey work—that is going to teach them the soft skills that they need to learn. That's a good way of doing it right there. Now, should the internships be early or later in their program? I would tend to agree that they should be someplace in the middle. If they really know what they are looking for, then maybe in the beginning. At the end is... maybe a second internship?" Northwest
"Educator: It's difficult. I know it's a burden on the employer to take the student in. But even if you will take an internship—if the student is motivated and knocks on your door—we don't know that they can go knock on your door to ask for an internship. So, that's kind of the communication thing I was talking about. I'm not saying that, if you put your name on our list, that we'll just send ten students to you as interns and that you'll have to bear the burden of that." Northwest
"And to get your name on the list, you're not always in a position where you can bring them in. Like right now, I've got five people applying for internships, and one of them is strictly on his own coming in. Others have instructors who are kind of leading the way. There's even some at the high school level looking for internships through Upward Bound or something like that. And you look at all of them in a little different manner, but the one that comes in on his own, even though it might be a required internship, if they come in on their own and say, 'Hey, I'm not sure if you guys are willing to do this, but this is what I can offer and I'll take anything,' then here we go. Being paid or unpaid, sometimes we do both. From an institutional standpoint, I'd really push the fact that it's unpaid. If it ends up being paid, it's just a bonus." Northwest
"Educator: For example, in our networking program, we've got 23 students enrolled in the program. And if there are three that are really good and highly-motivated to go get this internship, that's great. But if it's required for everybody within our geographic area, we have to find 25 spots for those network interns, and it could technically delay a student's graduation if there are only five spots every six months. If there were enough spots, I would say, 'Yes, an internship should be in every program, mandatory,' but it's that supply/demand thing. If there are 700 students enrolled—or how many thousands enrolled in IT degree-seeking programs—and we expect all of them to have an internship experience before the graduate, where do they go?

Employer: Well, I think you're assuming that they have to stay in the same area. When I went to school, it was a co-op, and it was mandatory. You might land in the town you're in and you might land 2,000 miles away. So, I guess I wouldn't limit it to the assumption that you have to be in northwest Minnesota or wherever.

Question: Or it's during the summer or it's over a break or...?

Employer: Exactly. Yeah. You took a quarter off and went and did this, and then you come back and maybe take another quarter...or not. And you paid for it still. But don't limit yourself to just here.

Educator: And I guess I wasn't implying that I wanted to limit it to here, but immediately that's where we would start. But how do we build that network? How do we know there are people willing to take our students as interns 2,000 miles away?

Employer: You start asking and you pound the streets."		 Northwest
"I think employers can also look at it as a vested interest. If you might have those future needs, why not have an intern? Know someone's work history for a summer—or a semester—and then you're able to make a decision if that would be a candidate you'd want to hire in the future. And another way you can look at it is maybe it's not an internship, but maybe it's part-time employment for a semester during the school year where they're still getting that experience whether it's called an internship or not. They still have it on their resume, and again, the employer can still use that experience if they have a part-time employee who's going to graduate in the future. It might be an easy transition into an opening." Northwest
"We've got a pretty good model in that every teaching student has to do a practicum and student teaching. And don't nursing students do practicums? There are models out there." Northwest
"The Chamber of Commerce had done quite a bit of work—industry-specific listening sessions—to talk directly to those groups about internships and whether they have utilized them. And many of the employers, I think, found the system—and I guess we only have experience with our local institutions—but it was rather cumbersome from their perspective, trying to get interns from the university mainly because there were so many different departments. Each department did it differently, and they had different expectations. And does an internship need to be paid? Do they need to have credits? And from the Chamber's perspective it was more or less just to get the experience. And we don't want to export the talent that's going on at the university. We'd like to keep that talent local. So, the idea was to try and create a better awareness and communication between the business community and the university and the technical college. I think what we deduced was that we need to get that communication back to the faculty. And to really push that onto the students—probably as freshman—that at some time during their four or five years, that they should seek an internship whether it's mandatory or not. And from the employer's perspective, it seemed that if it was a paid internship, they had more leverage with that student as well, so that they had more dependability with that student. And the employer also needs to make sure that it is a valued internship, not just, 'Go fill my coffee and empty the toner cartridge.' It's been a lot of work and very fascinating. And I think if we could get more of that communication and more discussion and make it easier for the employer, I think a lot of this would come into play." Northwest
"I understand that you can't require it for every program—unlike teaching or nursing—because you haven't got the reliable places to put people. Maybe you have to take it up to a higher level, and say, 'Okay, you've gone to school here your two years or four years or whatever, and now you negotiate something with employers across the country, world, whatever, to do like a grad assistantship, a higher level degree, an apprenticeship.' Not that they're going to stay with that company or wherever they get that...although they may. But maybe that's an easier place to start. I don't know." Northwest
"Employer 1: I'm sure there are some electives in your program. Could you build an internship in as an elective and...?

Educator: I believe any internships that are there, most of them are an elective. So, the student has to choose to do it, and then the faculty would work with them for that internship opportunity. But I think it's sometimes identifying where the opportunities are that both the student and the faculty find difficulty in the process.

Question: So, they struggle finding where to intern?

Educator: Right. And, really, we reach out to our advisory committee members, so we have the same ten or twelve employers that we're constantly pushing students at, and again, just the idea of being able to have this list—as geographically expansive as possible—of employers that have had or may be seeking interns. Hit the pavement. At least give them somewhere to start."		 Northwest
"Employer 1: Do you have a central department person or whatever to handle internships? That might be something to look at, too. Right now, I think we have three interns. They're not all from [MnSCU college], but somewhere from out-of-state or whatever. And for my employees, it's like, 'I deal with this professor, and so-and-so deals with that professor.' So, it might make more sense to have a coordinated central person or two—depending on the size of the institution—who keeps track of all those things.

Employer 2: Sort of an intern matchmaker."		 Northwest
"Educator 1: Ideally, in our institution, that position would have been our placement officer. But we have eliminated that position. And we made room on somebody else's plate to manage actual employment opportunities. But, yes, I think it's a viable option that each college establishes a single point of contact for employers so that we—and the students—have someone to go to. And, hopefully, this person can do that internship match. So, yes, that would be a first step—making a single point of contact at the institutions to manage it. The universities might be a little more difficult because of the expansive number of departments that they have, but again they could probably appoint someone in their department to be that point of contact.

Educator 2: Be better to have one department. When I went to school, that's what they had. They had a co-run department and everything went through that. But, of course, when you paid—while you were on that assignment—the credit hours that you paid for went to justify those positions.

Employer 1: We've got multiple institutions all answering or solving the problem in multiple ways, so that's a great idea."		 Northwest
"Employer: I wouldn't think that internships would necessarily have to be for credit. I think the fact that they went out and sought an internship shows initiative.

Educator: One-third of ours are credit-based. Two-thirds are not.

Employer: Oh. But it's more for the experience than for the credits."		 Northwest
"Employer: What if you consider doing the internship as an additional thing? If I have two candidates and one has sixty credit hours and the other has sixty credit hours plus he or she did an internship, you know who wins.

Educator: And I think our faculty can stand in front of the students and say, 'This is really important.'

Employer: Can you offer a certificate with your internship? Or some piece of paper to make it worth more on the resume?"		 Northwest