Lifelong Learning Programme

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.
This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Information and Contacts

Latest News

This section of the IWBLabs portal provides administrative information for the project contractual partners and for the European Commission and it is password protected.

Policy Makers

This guideline provides the policy makers with specific suggestion on how to assess the impact of international and virtual internships. The guideline covers topic such as: creation of an observatory to trace the quality of work based learning approaches; promoting of international and virtual internships.
Table of Contents
4.4 Collection of Best Practices, Experiences, Success Stories
4.4.5 Evaluation of Impact of Supporting Mechanism of Traineeship System

Today’s young graduates deal with many challenges. One of them is transition phase from education to the labor market and the unsustainable high youth unemployment rate in many EU countries.

On the other hand, employers greatly value work experience. That is the reason why early work experience such as internships, apprenticeships and traineeships are useful to simplify youth access to job market.

According to economic theory, we expect that student internships will have positive wage return.

Based on human capital theory, the additional skills, knowledge and competencies accumulated during the internship result in higher pay “if the time spent on an internship is more rewarding than the time spent studying” (Saniter, Siedler, 2014).

Signaling theories suggest that “employers' hiring decisions are made under uncertainty since the productivity of potential workers is unknown” (Saniter, Siedler, 2014). Young people that are looking for a job may therefore use internships and upon completion of the internship ask for providing of positive reference letters to signal high ability, which may result in improved job matching and higher earnings.

Screening theory foresees that firms use such indicators to more precisely assess workers' hidden productivity.

Social capital theory also predicts that internships ensure positive labor market returns because of the opportunity they provide to create relationships with potential employers and co-workers. These social ties can lead to better jobs after graduation.

Policy makers should be able to look into the statistical database published in the virtual platform, where the results of the output questionnaires of interns will be processed and sorted by the agro-food industry sector, by schools, by company. Policy makers can perform their analyses, whether the students who participated in the internship subsequently found a better job than those who did not participate in the internship, whether they are after graduating employed in the company, in which they participated in the internship, or at least in that sector, whether they receive higher wages or better jobs than those who did not have an internship, etc.


Online Resource

Saniter N., Siedler T. (2014). Door Opener or Waste of Time? The Effects of Student Internships on Labor Market Outcomes
This paper studies the causal effect of student internship experience on labor market choices and wages later in life

Follow us

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.