The Relationship Between Internships and Long-Run Wages for Vocational Students

• In Event: Pathways to Teaching: Motivations and Deliberations When Entering the Profession

Abstract

Internships are a vital component of vocational education systems. The aim of this study is to understand whether internship programs at vocational schools are correlated with the long-run wages of students. To analyze this, I conduct three sets of analyses using longitudinal survey data from 2013 to 2014 on more than 12,000 vocational students in China. Estimates from ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses show that having internships is not directly associated with long-run wages but doing internships in later stages of studies is positively associated with long-run wages. Heterogeneous effect estimates show that long-run wages and internship length might have a positive correlation for programs such as computing.

Author

• Qian Zhang, Stanford University