Kyoungjin Jang-Tucci, Matthew T. Hora, Jiahong Zhang
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Internships are recognized globally as a high-impact practice that substantially enhances students’ future prospects. However, concerns persist about their legality and potentially exclusionary nature. While prior research indicates participation varies based on key variables, such as gender and major, empirical work remains limited and tends to focus on univariate or single-actor explanations. We employ multi-actor models from management studies to analyze survey data (n = 1153) from 13 U.S. institutions, nine of which are minority-serving institutions (MSI). The data reveal that only 30.3% of the students participated in internships, of which 43.4% were unpaid. Linear probability analysis results indicate that contrary to expectations, individual demographic characteristics, such as gender, were not significant predictors of internship compensation on their own. Instead, academic, institutional, and employer characteristics emerged as significant predictors. Interaction analysis results highlight the combined effects of race, gender, major, MSI status, and employer characteristics in predicting participation in unpaid internships. Further, the data suggest that gender effects are largely influenced by academic major affiliation, emphasizing that unpaid internships do not uniformly affect all students but are predominant in specific sub-groups. We conclude by proposing a strategy to eliminate unpaid internships in the interest of transformative social justice work.
期刊介绍:
Higher Education is recognised as the leading international journal of Higher Education studies, publishing twelve separate numbers each year. Since its establishment in 1972, Higher Education has followed educational developments throughout the world in universities, polytechnics, colleges, and vocational and education institutions. It has actively endeavoured to report on developments in both public and private Higher Education sectors. Contributions have come from leading scholars from different countries while articles have tackled the problems of teachers as well as students, and of planners as well as administrators.
While each Higher Education system has its own distinctive features, common problems and issues are shared internationally by researchers, teachers and institutional leaders. Higher Education offers opportunities for exchange of research results, experience and insights, and provides a forum for ongoing discussion between experts.
Higher Education publishes authoritative overview articles, comparative studies and analyses of particular problems or issues. All contributions are peer reviewed.