Enhancing undergraduate courses with internships

Abstract

In the drive to enhance undergraduate courses in various disciplines, industrial placements are becoming part of them for an increasing number, ranging from engineering to accounting and social work. The paper analyses internship practice at a large higher education technological university in the island of Crete, in the south of Greece. This work describes the different approaches that have to internships each of the three stakeholders involved, based on the long experience of academic internship supervisors of the Institute. The findings of this paper are based on an enhanced internship project that the Greek institute is running funded by European funds and reports preliminary results of this programme. In addition, suggestions based on experience are made for future development and monitoring of internship programmes to achieve beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders involved.