Participates’ Reflection on Internship Program Barriers in Estonian Universities

Scientific articles reflect a lot about different forms of university and industry collaborations. Mostly they talk about knowledge transfer and innovation. However, it is also important to pay attention to the inhibiting factors of accepting interns and on the other side examine difficulties that students have in finding internship placement as well as understand internship supervisors’ views on the issue. For students internship is a good opportunity to learn job related skills and not necessarily get involved with the company in the future. This article reviews internship program barriers from three perspectives: interns and university supervisors from five Estonian universities and site supervisors from various companies. This study investigates an intern as someone who is in training, who may be paid, but who is a temporary employee (Tovey, 2001); internship as a supplement or complement to academic instruction in environmental science. The data from site supervisors and interns were collected through a web-based questionnaire and universities supervisors were interviewed. Survey was carried out during 2012-2014. The sample consists of 418 interns, 194 institutions providing internship and 24 internship supervisors from universities. The study gives an overview of the situation of internship in Estonia. The data have been discussed in the context of the related literature. Increasing the quality of internship in enterprises in Estonia involves various stakeholders. The author of the present study finds that change can be achieved by coordinated cooperation between stakeholders. In course of cooperation, the best cooperation models and communication meeting mutually agreed aims can be developed.