Andy Osheroff, Ph.D., leads the Career & Employment Hub at the University of Southern Maine, which helps USM students access internships, job shadows and career-building experiences. All views are the writer’s own.
Commencement season is wrapping up and we’re entering that time of year when job prospects for recent grads are top of mind. News articles this spring have drawn completely opposite conclusions, ranging from “Young graduates face the grimmest job market in years” in the New York Times to “College graduates are finally catching a break in this job market” in the Wall Street Journal.
If the experts can’t agree, what are students supposed to do?
Leading the Career Services team at the University of Southern Maine, I’m often asked by employers and community partners how they can support our students through this unparalleled level of uncertainty. This is a particularly important question knowing that Maine, the oldest state in the country, needs to attract, develop and retain our young talent.
If you are a working professional reading this and thinking about the best way to support new grads, the single most important thing you can do is create and support a paid internship.
The evidence to support internships is compelling. Research summarized by workforce expert Brandon Busteed found internships double the odds that a college student will have a good job upon graduating and will be engaged in their work over their lifetime.
On the employer side, the outcomes are just as positive. As Busteed notes, the internship-to-hire ratio is 144 times better than the job-posting-to-hire ratio. Beyond the reduced costs of talent acquisition, there are numerous other benefits to internships including having interns address business problems and being able to influence your future employee’s skill development. Ultimately, internships affect your bottom line.
At a time when artificial intelligence is reshaping industries and creating uncertainty about jobs, employers consistently tell us they need graduates who can communicate effectively, solve problems, think critically and adapt to change. Skills for years that have been on top of mind for employers. These are the very skills developed through a liberal arts education. Internships provide the best of both worlds by allowing students to use the skills they develop in the classroom in real-world settings while helping employers identify and cultivate talent for a rapidly evolving workplace.
Despite all of the positive benefits of internships, there is a dramatic deficit of opportunities provided versus the demand from students. Nationally in 2024, a total of 8.2 million students sought internships but only 3.6 million were successful.
However, we don’t just need internships, we need paid internships. The outcomes for unpaid interns, such as job offers and earnings, are far worse. Further, unpaid internships leave out a large swath of students who cannot afford to take them.
According to a Gallup article in 2023, only 27% of first-generation students and 35% of public university students have an internship experience, compared to 41% of all college students nationally. Here at the University of Southern Maine, approximately 60% of our students complete at least one internship before they graduate. While we are ahead of national trends, more work is needed to scale these experiences and ensure these are paid opportunities.
One of the ways that we approach this challenge is through our Career Exploration Internship Program (CEIP), which just celebrated its 10-year anniversary. It’s designed to bring together employer partners to establish a standard of high-quality paid experiences with a clear timeframe and expectations for interns. Importantly, the program runs three times per year, including fall and spring, avoiding the summer internship bottleneck. We also utilize grant funding, philanthropy and employer cost share to ensure every participating student is paid and to stretch the total number of opportunities.
If more Maine employers created just one paid internship, thousands of students would gain valuable experience while helping businesses cultivate the next generation of talent to see their career future here in Maine. It’s a worthy investment in our students, our businesses and Maine’s economy.
