Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

Students who took paid internships or co-ops were more likely to receive an offer of full-time employment and a higher salary offer from their employers than were students who took unpaid internships or co-ops, according to results of NACE’s Class of 2015 Student Survey.

Paid internships/co-ops with private, for-profit companies yielded the highest offer rate (72.2 percent). In contrast, just 43.9 percent of students who had unpaid internships/co-ops with private, for-profit companies received offers. (See Figure 1.)

The difference in offer rates between paid and unpaid positions is evident across employer types, including nonprofit (51.7 percent vs. 41.5 percent), state/local government (50.5 percent vs. 33.8 percent), and federal government sectors (61.9 percent vs. 50 percent). (See Figure 1.)

There was also a similar pattern in regard to starting salary offers. Having had a paid internship/co-op with a private, for-profit company yielded the highest median offer at $53,521, while the median offer for students who took unpaid internships/co-ops with a private, for-profit company was $34,375.

The same held true across industry sectors—nonprofit ($41,876 vs. $31,443), state/local government ($42,693 vs. $32,969), and federal government sectors ($48,750 vs. $42,501).

Overall, an employer was far more likely to offer a job to a student prior to graduation if he or she had an internship or co-op—especially a paid position. The gap in offer rates between students with internship/co-op experience and those without such experience grew from 12.6 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2015 (56.5 percent versus 36.5 percent).

The Class of 2015 Student Survey was administered to 39,950 students at the associate's, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree levels through NACE's college members from February 11, 2015, to April 30, 2015. The focus of the survey report is the 9,184 bachelor's degree students who indicated that they would be graduating—or already had graduated—during the 2014-2015 academic school year (July 1 to June 30), and were thus members of the Class of 2015. The Class of 2015 Student Survey was sponsored by Enterprise.

Survey participants can access a full copy of the report through MyNACE. Highlights from the Class of 2015 Student Survey are available at www.naceweb.org/surveys/student.aspx.

Figure 1: Job offer rates and starting salary offers, by type of internship/co-op experience