Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00749-w

Student internships and work placements: approaches

to risk management in higher education

Denis Odlin 1 & Maureen Benson-Rea

2
& Bridgette Sullivan-Taylor
2

Accepted: 2 August 2021 / Published online: 17 August 2021

# The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021

Abstract
The increased use of student internships and other forms of work placements in higher
education programmes brings recognised benefits to students but also changes the risks
for higher education institutions (HEIs) globally. This paper responds to the under-
addressed problem for HEI managers of understanding the varying levels of risk of harm
to students and HEIs, and the HEIs’ strategic responsibilities to understand how to
mitigate the risk for both parties. We develop a typology of the main types of internship
placements and theorise their associated levels of risk according to the HEI’s levels of
responsibility and operational control. The risk types are then plotted in a model of risk
mitigation, mapped against the frequency of their occurrence and the severity of their
impact, with a focus on HEIs and students. We conclude with practical and policy
implications for HEIs and their managers. Our paper argues that HEIs must balance their
risks and responsibilities with the costs and benefits of student internships and work
placements, and contributes to understanding potential gaps between HEI strategic
decision-making and operational practice at the programme level, along with solutions
to address these.

Keywords Internships . Placements . Risk management . Policy . Student safety . Typology

Introduction

Case one: A British student died falling from an apartment balcony in Spain following a
party. The student was on a one-year internship at a Majorca hotel, as a mandatory
component of his languages degree at a major UK university (Couzens, 2018).

* Denis Odlin
[email protected]

1
Department of International Business, Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Auckland University of
Technology, Auckland, New Zealand
2
Department of Management and International Business, University of Auckland Business School,
Auckland, New Zealand
1410 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Case two: Taiwanese unions and lawmakers criticised an internship programme for
prospective flight attendants involving a major airline and four universities. Tourism and
hospitality students flew up to 60 hours per month and received scholarships of about $
US 4800 per semester. Interns undertook similar work to paid flight attendants, who were
expected to supervise them. Unions claimed this arrangement exploited both students and
staff, and questioned whether the interns could cope in an emergency (Shan, 2018).
Case three: On the first day of his internship in the HR department of a large Illinois firm,
a US student was one of five people shot and killed by a terminated employee. The intern
was observing the termination meeting on an optional course-related placement ar-
ranged by his university (Ailworth & Barrett, 2019).
Case four: During a summer clerkship at a prominent New Zealand (NZ) law firm, five
women interns were sexually harassed. The students’ university and NZ Law Society
became involved. Subsequent mishandling of the situation damaged the law firm
reputationally, while the university’s role in monitoring student safety in such internships
was also questioned (Bazley, 2018).

The increased use of internships and work placements (Zilvinskis, 2019) by higher education
institutions (HEIs) (Pinto & Pereira, 2019) (including public and private universities, poly-
technics and tertiary vocational education providers) brings benefits for students (Silva et al.,
2016) and hosting organisations (Vélez & Giner, 2015). Their use also changes the risks for
HEI managers, students and faculty. While internships give students confidence and better
critical thinking skills (Crossman & Clarke, 2010), make graduates more employable (Pinto &
Pereira, 2019; Di Meglio et al., 2021) and build stronger university connections to industry
(Hodge et al., 2011), questions around the risks of harm to the students and to the institutions
and their reputations are under-addressed, yet increasingly relevant to HEIs. For instance, in
the four cases above, what were the HEIs’ responsibilities for student welfare? Could/should
they have predicted and mitigated the risks? What aspects of the internships influenced the
levels of risk and the HEIs’ responsibility? To address such ill-defined areas of practice, this
paper explores HEI management of student internship and work placement risks and provides
a systematic approach for identifying and categorising those risks, along with recommenda-
tions for risk mitigation.
A typical student internship has been defined as a:
term-length placement of an enrolled student in an organization – sometimes with pay,
sometimes without – with a faculty supervisor, a company supervisor and some
academic credit earned toward the degree (Narayanan et al., 2010, p. 61).
Accordingly, our paper addresses internships within HE programmes and distinguishes these
from internships independently undertaken in the workplace by people seeking career pro-
gression (Hunt & Scott, 2020). Although some researchers include a wider range of “learning-
at-the-job-experiences outside the academic campus” (Silva et al., 2018, p. 9), the common HE
usage of “internship” embraces various student work experiences before graduation. Two
common formats are “thin sandwich” courses, in which multiple, short internships are
distributed over, say, a three-year degree, and “thick sandwich”, namely single, longer
internships often at the end of the degree (Clark & Zukas, 2016). Practitioners also use the
terms practicum (Ryan et al., 1996) and work placements (Wilton, 2012), and can include
apprenticeships (Tynjälä, 2013) and vocational training (Kessels & Kwakman, 2007). Intern-
ships exclude extracurricular (such as those related to sport) and problem-based activities (such
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1411

as case study competitions), project-based learning (such as in-course consulting reports) and
business or organisational simulations.
Internships create new and unique relationships between at least three parties; students,
hosting organisations and the HEI (Vélez & Giner, 2015), and all three are potentially at risk.
Additionally, damage may spread to otherwise-uninvolved employees of the host and faculty,
and to fellow students. Internship risks are exacerbated by naïve, inexperienced and vulnerable
students, and HEIs whose objectives may differ from those of hosting organisations. Placing
increasing numbers of international students (OECD, 2018) may add to risk, along with
internships requiring domestic students to travel abroad (Pinto & Pereira, 2019).
The purpose of this paper is to examine the broad range of risks that HEIs and
students face in relation to internship programmes and to offer robust analytical
guidance on their management by HEIs, where appropriate. The paper encompasses
risks to students because HEIs are prima facie responsible for their students. Detailed
risks to the host organisations are largely outside our scope, since hosts must manage
risk within their own operating context. Our research questions are the following: (1)
What types of internships entail what risks to HEIs and students, and with what HEI
responsibilities? (2) What specific risks occur, and with what frequency and severity,
especially in internships where HEI responsibility and risk are simultaneously high?
(3) What strategies can HEIs adopt to mitigate these risks, especially in higher risk
internships?
To understand the risks to HEIs of internships and their mitigation, we develop a
typology of student placement experiences built on Silva et al. (2018) and Narayanan
et al. (2010). We then introduce a risk management and analysis framework to
distinguish how HEIs’ responsibilities may vary by placement type, highlighting two
that combine high responsibility with relatively high risk. We then explore internship
risks that HEI managers and researchers may not have systematically identified and
discuss how these map to the risk framework. Illustrating our arguments are examples
from international postgraduate internship programmes at a large university in New
Zealand (UNZ), where the co-authors draw on over 30 years’ combined experience of
setting up, operating, managing and evaluating internship programmes. We suggest
actions to address risk, cautioning against over-managing some risks that reflect the
inherent uncertainty in the modern world and which may be necessary to enhance
internship learning, and conclude with practice and policy implications. The paper
does not attempt an exhaustive list of specific risks (or indeed internship-type
placements) because risks vary between internship programmes and new risks and
internship forms will emerge, such as the risk posed by the Covid-19 pandemic in
2020–2021 and the corresponding rise in virtual placements (Al-Zhyri, 2020; Briant &
Crowther, 2020).
Our paper contributes to pedagogical research by developing an original typology of key
internship forms to help HEIs identify their overall risks and responsibilities in each. This
typology can assist HE research by: introducing conceptual clarity in the field to distinguish
different internships that are often mixed in the HE literature; guiding future research on the
learning and employability outcomes of each internship/placement type; and informing cur-
riculum changes that aim to improve action-learning. Our internship risk framework of
frequency and severity, with examples of programme-level actions and strategic policies to
manage these risks, contributes to HEI policy and practice and also provides a conceptual
framework for future research into the prevalence of risks in various contexts.
1412 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Internship risk and uncertainty

Concepts of risk

Risk involves the likelihood of some—typically hazardous—situation occurring plus any

damage or loss as a consequence (Kaplan & Garrick, 1981). The concept of risk is often
confused with uncertainty; risk is a situation where managers do not know, with certainty,
what an outcome will be but do know the possible outcomes, along with the probability of
those outcomes occurring. Uncertainty exists when decision-makers know neither the possible
outcomes nor their probability of occurring (Knight, 1921). Applying this distinction between
risk and uncertainty to our discussion of HEI risk management implies that uncertainty cannot
be managed because the probability of an unforeseeable occurrence cannot be known. In
higher education (HE), risk has been associated with policy-led initiatives (Beck, 2014),
marketing and reputational problems (Healey, 2015) and economic analysis, including
marketisation, short-termism and market failure (Healey, 2015). Less research attention has
been paid to the analysis of risks associated with student placements.
The literature around internship risk management in HEIs addresses concerns of legal
liability, compensation and health and safety to the institution and faculty (e.g. Grenfell &
Koch, 2018; Saunders, 2000; Schultz, 1992; Swift & Kent, 1999), and hosting firms or other
organisations (e.g. McEvoy, 2013; Swift & Kent, 1999). However, it does not analyse the
frequency or severity of these occurrences, so does not provide adequately robust, analytical
guidance for managers. Moreover, those risks falling short of legal liability, risks to students
themselves and institutions’ moral or ethical responsibilities (which generalise more widely
than legal obligations) are under-researched. Risk extends beyond injury or emotional harm to
people, and damage or loss to physical or financial assets. Notably, as knowledge organisa-
tions built on intangible assets, HEIs rely on reputation for recruiting students and faculty
(Power et al., 2009). Reputational risk differs from other types because it is a social construct
derived from social interaction, and reputational damage affects organisations’ legitimacy
(Power et al., 2009).
Processes to address on-campus risks cannot be implemented with certainty or authority
while students are offsite. Further, for most hosting organisations, overseeing an intern is an
exceptional activity, so organisations’ risk management processes may be unsophisticated or
ill-prepared for that context. Thus, internships occur in situations where new relationships are
formed, legal and ethical responsibilities are ambiguous and the attendant risks often unde-
fined, unappreciated and therefore unmanaged.

Risk analysis model

Risk analysis represents a calculation of the costs associated with a hazardous occurrence
weighted by the probability of that occurrence. Risk management often requires analytical
models such as risk matrices to categorise and prioritise risks facing organisations in terms of
their relative frequency and severity (Elmontsri, 2014). While matrices are simplifications,
because often a range of severities is possible for a given occurrence (plus other incalculable
uncertainties may be involved) (Elmontsri, 2014), we use risk matrices to illustrate internship
risk mitigation in this paper as a systematic logic for unravelling risks and examining where
they may lie, particularly where either the probability or the harm severity cannot be estimated
with precision. Figure 1 shows a generic risk matrix, with frequency of loss on the x-axis and
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1413

Fig. 1 Generic risk dimensions. Source: Authors, based on Elmontsri (2014) and Dorfman (2002)

severity of loss on the y-axis, rated as high and low. Risk mitigation approaches are associated
with each resulting quadrant (Dorfman, 2002; Elmontsri, 2014): such as frequency reduction
in quadrant 2 and risk avoidance in quadrant 4.

Typology of internships/placements

To analyse their exposure to risk, managers must conceptualise the nature and extent of their
responsibilities, identifying their control, legal and moral accountability, and the riskiness of
their activities (Power, 2006). Typologies are ways of conceptualising phenomena or ideas
(e.g. Gale & Parker, 2014) as “deductive analytical categories” (Brotherhood, Hammond &
Kim, 2020), as an organising matrix (Boehe, 2016), or as a framework “that makes the world
easier to understand” (Healey, 2015, p. 2). Developing a typology is a “unique form of theory-
building” (Doty & Glick, 1994, p. 231), particularly in mid-range theorising since it enables
researchers to “identify multiple theoretical or ‘ideal’ types, each representing a unique set or
combination of the attributes under investigation” (Benson-Rea et al., 2013, p. 719).
Typologies have been used in previous HE research related to risk. Healey’s (2015)
contribution on risk in transnational HE partnerships constructs a typology on six dimensions
to investigate risk within the theory of market failure. Underlining the value of typologies in
HE, Healey argues for exploratory classification frameworks to “capture the diversity and
complexity of the phenomenon” under investigation and that the underlying theories chosen to
build it should provide a basis for a ‘better’ typology than alternative analyses (Healey, 2015,
p. 7). He presents a typology for an HE risk phenomenon at the macro (transnational) level,
which prompts us to follow up with a risk typology at the meso (institutional) and micro
(programme, manager or student) levels.
1414 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Building the typology followed these steps: (1) define the theoretical assumptions
informing the ideals within the range of types, (2) develop the types in between the theoretical
extremes, (3) test each type with evidence from practice to sharpen the distinctions between the
types, and then (4) check and verify by iterating between the three steps (Benson-Rea et al.,
2013). In Table 1, we number and label each type by student experience as the column
headings and elaborate on the differences between them by analysing the sources of risk and
uncertainty in each of the theorised contexts. Our typology is not exhaustive (and new risks
will emerge) but we use it to theorise the main boundaries of risk on which HEI managers can
build approaches to decision-making and risk management. We assess the level of risk
according to the HEI’s levels of responsibility and control, and then populate the typology
using measures of high, medium and low. We use these assessments of responsibility and
control to theorise the approximate levels of risk arising from the different settings. We now
explain the dimensions used to evaluate the overall risk/responsibility of the resulting eight
types.

Student experience type

Previous research into internships and placements identified the importance of such factors as
the structure and nature of internships and their design (Silva et al., 2018), and whether they
are mandatory, compulsory or facultative/voluntary (Bittman & Zorn, 2020). Accordingly, our
types delineate student workplace learning between the two extreme ideal types of Pure HE
(type 1), which would be an entirely on-campus classroom-type experience, and type 8,
independent internship post-graduation, once HEI enrolment is complete. While field trips
and study tours (types 2 and 3) are not necessarily workplace based, they are included as they
represent learning experiences off-campus and can be calibrated by more or less control or
risk. What we call “classic” internships are types 5 and 6, and are differentiated by a finer-
grained analysis according to the attributes below.

Nature of student experience and assessment

We theorise that if the experience is mandatory, earns course or programme level credit and/or
the student pays extra or the full costs, HEI responsibility significantly increases, although
even optional placements facilitated by the HEI may imply some level of HEI responsibility.

Duration

We theorise that total and unbroken time off-campus heightens risk because there is longer for
something to go wrong. A work placement (type 4), where students are only off-campus for
short periods, is medium risk, because of the ongoing joint management between the HEI and
the host, but otherwise similar internships (types 5 and 6) are high risk, because the HEI’s
control is more limited. Thus duration may affect HEI responsibility and risk.

Location

Locations further away from the home institution raise risk, as do inherently riskier locations
such as factories or politically unstable countries, which may be precisely the locations
 Table 1 A typology of student placement experiences theorising levels of risk for HEIs
Type 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Dimension
Student Pure HE Field study/ Overseas Work placement Mandatory Facultative Vacation Independent
experience type (campus only) trip study tour Apprenticeship internship internship internship internship post-
Sandwich course graduation
Nature of Mandatory Often Optional or Mandatory Paid or Student choice Student choice Student choice
student Student cost mandatory mandatory Paid or Unpaid Unpaid Paid or Paid or unpaid Job try-out
experience Student cost Student cost Unpaid Not part of any Paid or unpaid
course
Nature of For-credit Optional or For-credit Compulsory, Optional, for- None, vocational None,
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

assessment for-credit for-credit credit or work vocational or

content experience work experience
Duration Multiple Short (days) Short, days or One or more One or more semesters, or several Weeks Months or
semesters weeks semesters, weeks, or longer weeks
several weeks or
regular day(s)
Location On campus Local to International Local to campus Local to campus, domestic, Local to campus, Domestic or
campus or or domestic or international domestic, international
domestic or international
Student Domestic & international Both but higher risk Domestic & Graduate
vulnerability for international or diverse cohorts international

HEI level of Staff control Accompanied Accompanied Jointly managed Limited after negotiation and Limited to timing
operational Structured by staff by staff or not with workplace agreement with host & possible
control programme Structured advice or
programme facilitation
High Medium Medium Medium Low Low None
Theorised level High High Medium None
of HEI
responsibility
Theorised level Low Low-medium Medium Medium High Medium None
of risk to HEI High High High High High responsibility/ low Medium No
responsibility/ responsibility/ responsibility/ responsibility/ operational control responsibility/ responsibility/
high medium medium medium low operational no operational
operational operational operational operational control control
control control control control
Source: Authors’ conceptualisation
1415
1416 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

required for certain kinds of internships, such as those in engineering or hospitality, respec-
tively. Types 5 and 6 may occur far enough from the campus to make HEI control, safeguards
and intervention difficult. Distance incurs extra costs, may isolate the student and thereby
lower control, which raises risk.

Student vulnerability

Based on potential vulnerability rather than control, we theorise that both risk and HEI
responsibility will be higher for students unfamiliar with their work placement context, those
who may be “different” in the sense of ethnicity, religion, disability or gender, or those with
health constraints in some environments. For conceptual simplicity across the many possibil-
ities for vulnerability, we highlight international student placements, or domestic students
attending placements abroad. In unfamiliar situations far from home and support networks,
international students take types 5 and 6 to high risk.

HEI responsibility/operational control

Responsibility means moral and/or ethical accountability for risks to the institutions and
their students. Drawing on our experience and the literature, we theorise responsibility as
high, medium or none based on a cumulative assessment of the other rows, and
especially HEI control. Increasing control is the main factor raising responsibility, while
potentially lowering risk, but not necessarily. Control and responsibility would be
highest in Pure HE, and non-existent in independent post-graduation internships. Types
5 and 6 are high responsibility and high risk because the nature of the placement is a
course or programme requirement, but with low levels of operational control once
agreements with host organisations are negotiated and in force. We note that even where
HEI responsibility is high, both hosts and students may also have responsibilities.

Risk to HEIs

To capture broadly how the types of student placements may alter HEI risk, we theorise
combinations from high responsibility/low risk (types 1, 2), through high responsibility/
medium risk (types 3, 4), to no responsibility/no risk (type 8). Nevertheless, HEIs must assess
risks according to their individual programme, faculty and country situations. Of most concern
for managers, and thus for our risk management framework, are the situations of high
responsibility/high risk (the highest level) where HEIs simultaneously have high responsibility
but low levels of operational control (types 5 and 6).
University responsibility in the four introductory cases is better understood using our
typology. Case one, with a student on a for-credit mandatory international placement,
best fits a type 5 internship, in which the HEI had high responsibility but low operational
control. Case two described optional placements coordinated by the universities, so
represents a type 6 internship. Case three, being for-credit but optional internship, also
represents type 6 with high responsibility but low operational control. Case four occurred
on an optional placement outside the university programme (and thus control) and
represents a type 7 vacation internship, meaning medium level responsibility for the
universities because they coordinated it.
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1417

The typology conceptualises the risks of internships, set against other forms of placement
experiences and provides a basis for understanding internship and placement risk mitigation
and management.

Application—risks in internships

The two parts of this section expand on the risks from internships for HEIs and students,
respectively, particularly in types 5 and 6 internships. Other risks may exist in certain
internships but those we elaborate are likely to be present in all internships to some extent.
Detailing host risks is beyond our scope, although HEI managers need to appreciate that if host
risks become too onerous, they may quite rationally avoid the risk entirely by withdrawing.
The subheadings below bracket the authors’ qualitative categorisation of risk frequency (low/
high) and severity (low/high/variable), based on their experiences with internships
programmes over 30 years: they are “preliminary” as they are subject to individual HEIs’
circumstances. Also bracketed are the corresponding quadrants of Figures 2 and 3, which
apply the generic risk matrix in Figure 1 to HEI and student situations, respectively, in
internships. Hence, LF/HS denotes low frequency and high severity, implying Q3 in the risk
matrix.
We illustrate the risks with examples from the four introductory cases and postgraduate
internships at UNZ. The latter were type 6 (facultative) for-credit internships that required
students to work as a consultant for between five and eight weeks in a host organisation on a
project addressing specific international business or marketing problems. Most were interna-
tional students. These examples illustrate that the same underlying risk can produce different
severity and types of damage to various parties, especially once we account for reverberation

Fig. 2 Risks to HEIs and mitigation approaches. Source: Authors, based on Elmontsri (2014) and Dorfman
(2002). No HF/HS cases as such programmes would be non-viable
1418 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Fig. 3 Risks to students and mitigation approaches. Source: Authors, based on Elmontsri (2014) and Dorfman
(2002). No HFHS cases as such programmes would be non-viable.

via reputational damage or the ethical extension of an HIE’s interests to cover those of its
students. Nor are the following categories of risk isolated from each other. For instance, poor
student performance during an internship may cause the host business damage, the student
emotional stress and the HEI reputational harm.

Risks to HEIs

HEI and staff reputation with host (HF/LS) (Q2)

If interns perform unsatisfactorily, ignore hosts’ behaviour codes, or at the extreme are
criminally dishonest, the reputations of the HEI and staff overseeing them suffer with the
hosts. However, student off-campus performance and behaviour may be unforeseeable even to
their teachers (Jackson, 2020). The internship may be a student’s first exposure to any
workplace—and making sense of expectations in such contexts is a key learning outcome
(Hodge et al., 2011). Nevertheless, hosts may question why the HEI sent ill-prepared interns.
Fortunately, although the frequency of interns performing poorly is high, given that any cohort
will have students of varying capability and motivation, the severity of damage is typically
minimal because hosts are conscious of student inexperience and will adjust intern roles and
their expectations accordingly.

HEI and staff reputation with public (LF/HS) (Q3)

More concerning to HEIs is criticism in the media for extreme acts committed on or by
students. Thus in the case four sexual harassment example in the introduction, the main
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1419

university involved severed relationships with the law firm, including lucrative sponsor-
ships, as did other NZ universities once the harassment was publicised (“Six NZ
universities cut ties with law firm”, 2018). This distancing occurred more than a year
after the main university learned of the problem, suggesting their responses were to the
publicity, not student harm. Although potentially severe, a search of the media database
Factiva (Dow Jones, 2019) using combinations of key words “internship; work place-
ment; university; college; criticism; scandal” suggests such criticism, like that of the
Taiwanese universities and flight attendants in case two, has been infrequent. While this
may represent underreporting due to power differences between hosts and students keen
to secure follow-up jobs, an increased willingness to speak up, evidenced by the “Me
too” movement, means HEIs should take risks of student harm and subsequent reputa-
tional damage more seriously.

Research ethics breach (LF/LS) (Q1)

Many types 5 and 6 internships, especially in advanced degrees, may be deemed research
because students gather data and write reports on their experiences, raising potential
breaches of research ethics. During the placement, for example, students analysing
proprietary data or interviewing staff must honour confidentiality, gain informed consent
and avoid harming participants (e.g. British Sociological Association, 2017). After the
placement, for example, if students quote, with attribution, a host staff member’s
criticism of host management in written or verbal reports, this breaches research ethics
and may harm that staff member. However, the few known ethics breaches in the UNZ
programme were minor and without evident consequences for the university or host.

Student dissatisfaction with HEI (HF/LS) (Q2)

We are concerned here with student dissatisfaction insofar as it rebounds on HEIs.

Internships may be stressful and students who do not stretch themselves will not only
fail to realise benefits but perhaps end up dissatisfied with the programme overall.
Interns’ (dis)satisfaction is closely tied to job characteristics and host work environment
(D’Abate et al., 2009)—factors outside the full control of HEIs but perhaps reasonably
foreseeable if they approve the placement. Students communicating their dissatisfaction
to others in their cohort may breed further discontent, while communicating it to
prospective students, for example via social media, potentially reduces future enrolments.
Yet damage from dissatisfaction, while frequent, is no more severe than dissatisfied
students in campus-only programmes and may be counterbalanced by positive word-of-
mouth about internship benefits and continuous programme improvement.
Figure 2 summarises these risks to HEIs and applies them to the generic risk matrix.

Risks to students

We consider risks to students to the extent that HEIs are responsible for students.
Students entering workplaces encounter various physical and emotional risks not faced
on campus. Understanding these risks is important to HEIs if they are to act in students’
best interests.
1420 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Host fails to support student (HF/LS) (Q2)

HEIs rely on hosts to deliver interns a valuable experience in a suitable and realistic working
environment. Some organisations’ willingness and ability to do so may fade once the intern
arrives, possibly months after the organisation made the hosting commitment. The managers
who made the commitment may have resigned or be consumed with more strategic matters.
Organisations may underestimate the resources required, or delegate responsibility to a poorly
disposed staff member. If so, students may gain little benefit from the internship.
These situations occurred frequently in the UNZ programme. One CEO delegated respon-
sibility to a seemingly uninterested sales manager, who allocated the intern a distant desk then
provided no data, access to firm systems or one-to-one time. Another firm had wanted an
intern to conduct a market analysis but could not wait and hired an external consultant without
notification, leaving the student with no project. Despite the high frequency, the repercussions
of poor host support were typically limited to student dissatisfaction with the programme. To
compensate, faculty would have to create additional tasks and provide extra student support,
adding to their workload, so poor host support also damaged the HEI.

Health and safety breaches (LF/HS) (Q3)

Physical risks of intern injury include lifting heavy objects, using equipment interns are
untrained for, or generally working in hazardous environments. Although health and safety
risks are likely to be less frequent in humanities, arts and social science internships compared
with those in science, engineering and medicine, and work placements like apprenticeships,
injuries could nonetheless be severe. One UNZ business intern found themselves packing and
lifting boxes in a factory for a week because the host’s small firm culture dictated that
everyone should help when a large order needed to be fulfilled.

Emotional harm (HF/VS) (Q2 and Q4)

Internships are often difficult because of the emotional changes which are integral to internship
learning (Liu et al., 2011) but may create additional risks of emotional harm. Bullying or
sexual harassment as in case four illustrate extreme emotional risk, but internships confront
students with personal weaknesses such as poor self-motivation or time management (Bowen,
2018). Students may also recognise that they are unprepared for permanent work (Hodge et al.,
2011) and experience a reconfiguration of their personal identities in relation to work (Bowen,
2018; Trede et al., 2012). Interns must manage their emotions in their new work context to
achieve internship outcomes (Liu et al., 2011). Under these cumulative emotional pressures,
some interns risk “failing” (relevant to our typology because students experience it as
emotional risk), despite such mistakes often being the best teachers. The severity of damage
may vary from poor performance in for-credit assessment, to withdrawal from the course, to, at
worst, self-harm.
Hence, the risk is not that students will experience emotional stress, because pushing
students beyond their comfort zones is implicit in the internship experience, but that this stress
becomes damaging. Off campus and away from their teachers and other close adults (and
possibly home country), students’ emotional damage might not be noticed in time.
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1421

Cultural risk (HF/LS) (Q2)

Interns, especially international students, make cultural mistakes relatively often by

miscommunicating (local language skills), misreading cues or misunderstanding local institu-
tional systems (Conroy & McCarthy, 2019). However, the consequences are normally slight:
loss of face rather than outright social rejection and delays while navigating the new context.
Figure 3 summarises the key risks to students from internship programmes.
Internship risks raise concerns for practice at the operational level of programme manage-
ment, as well as more broadly for internship policies within the curricula. We next discuss
actions to mitigate programme-level operational risks, particularly in types 5 and 6 internships.

Risk mitigation

A range of actions for mitigating internship risks is structured within the risk matrix
framework—with some delivering both frequency and loss reduction (see complete listing
in Table 2). Common themes are improving the match between students and hosts, better
information, better motivation, ongoing communication and clearer accountability.

Table 2 Summary of risks and mitigation by HEIs

Risk Mitigation action Risk management approach
Institution Frequency Loss Reduction
reduction
Reputation – poor Student selection √ -
student Project selection √ -
performance Preparation course √ √
Close supervision √ √
Matching event √ √
Reputation – Host & project selection √ -
public criticism Close supervision √ -
Host liaison - √
Insurance - √
Research ethics Project selection √ √
breaches Preparation course √ √
Ethics processes √ -
Student Matching event √ √
dissatisfaction
Student
Host does not Host selection √ √
support student Host liaison √ √
Host selection √ -
Health and safety Host selection √ -
Close supervision - √
Insurance - √
Emotional harm Student selection √ -
Close supervision √ √
Cultural risk Preparation course √ √
Matching event - √
Source: Developed for this study
1422 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Risk avoidance (Q4)

Not offering internship programmes at all (thus reducing frequency and damage to zero) would
deprive both HEIs and students, and indeed hosts, of their benefits. As the matrices in Figures 2
and 3 show, most risks, whether to HEIs or students, are not in the high frequency, high
severity category which would warrant withdrawal from internships. Only student emotional
risks could in some circumstances extend into this category, although other actions are
available to reduce their severity, as discussed in “Loss reduction (reducing severity) (Q3)”.

Frequency reduction (Q2)

Student selection

To reduce the frequency of poor performance, internships can be made either optional (self-
selection) or by invitation (by selection). Students are less motivated in mandatory programmes
(Silva et al., 2016, 2018) and selection based on coursework or an interview makes internships
more exclusive and desired. For example, for one UNZ internship, students needed to self-select
for the higher-cost, slightly longer programme and then maintain a specified GPA. Where it was
known that students had recently suffered difficulty in their private lives that might contribute to
poor performance or additional emotional stress in their internship, staff recommended desk-
based projects on-campus instead to better monitor their well-being.

Host selection/communication

Host organisations must be carefully selected, and sometimes avoided, if the risk appears too
high. For example, a UNZ policy to reduce the frequency of sexual harassment or misunder-
standings in this area dictated avoiding host organisations based in home offices or with under
three staff. Although this excluded interesting projects from start-ups and online firms, too
many potential problems loomed in placing an international student unfamiliar with local
culture into someone’s home, where the professional/personal line blurs. To clarify the
requirements for hosting organisations prior to host acceptance, UNZ emailed both overviews
and detailed documents on how organisations should work with interns, elaborated expecta-
tions by telephone and gained written agreements from hosts.

Project selection

UNZ academic supervisors screened internship projects proposed by hosts and helped rewrite
them so they were neither too difficult (risking student underperformance) nor trivial (and
lacking educational benefits). To reduce the frequency of interns deliberately or accidentally
disclosing sensitive data, UNZ also rejected projects that organisations identified as significant
to organisational success or highly confidential.
Such detail-intensive dual vetting of host organisations and projects required a 0.5 full-time
equivalent staff member as industry liaison manager: recruiting host organisations, identifying
and initially scoping projects and ensuring suitable conditions for all parties. The UNZ
manager estimated that only 10% of organisations approached as potential hosts eventually
took on an intern once they understood the demands, because they lacked either motivation or
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1423

the necessary resources and working environment. The 90% “dropout” rate emphasises the
level of scrutiny and its importance for risk mitigation.

Preparation courses

For several years, UNZ ran compulsory workshops before the internships on expectations of
student conduct. This later became a for-credit course called “consultancy practice” to help
students think like consultants in addressing host organisation problems and covered
negotiating project parameters and research questions, setting host expectations, asking for
resources, research techniques and research ethics. For international placements, Conroy and
McCarthy (2019) advocate pre-departure, post-arrival and repatriation support structures for
students.

Ethics processes

Ethics requirements will vary by academic discipline and by HEI. To avoid delays seeking
research ethics approvals for every internship, the UNZ ethics committee granted the pro-
gramme a blanket approval after it determined that the risks were minor, on condition that only
secondary research and interviews were permitted for data collection. Interviews were permit-
ted because students were gathering primarily operational data and their subsequent reports
remained confidential. Nonetheless, students still presented participant information sheets and
gained signed consent forms from everyone they worked with. Students could not conduct
focus groups, administer surveys or record interviews. Before final presentations to host
organisations, host managers vetted student slides for confidential or sensitive data. Likewise,
faculty checked final reports to ensure participant confidentiality and appropriate tone.
Despite these wide-ranging frequency reduction actions, risk frequency is not reduced to
zero. Actions relying on individual perceptions are prone to human error, such as whether a
project is “business sensitive”. Student selection based on on-campus academic grades poorly
predicts performance off-campus (Jackson, 2020). Similarly, ideal internship hosts could be
rejected over apparent resource constraints. Moreover, risks lurk in even highly reputable and
well-resourced organisations as the cases in the introduction attest.

Loss reduction (reducing severity) (Q3)

Although the frequency of risks cannot be reduced to zero without ending the programmes entirely,
i.e. avoidance, HEIs can act to reduce the severity of loss should an adverse situation occur.

Close supervision

At UNZ, the primary loss reduction action was assigning senior academics to closely monitor
internships. Each week, students submitted a 500-word report, and then met their academic
supervisor for 30 minutes. Besides guiding students, supervisors asked probing questions to
monitor the emotional, health and safety, and cultural environment from the student’s per-
spective. With such intense supervision, one academic could supervise about 15 students.
Academics with experience as industry managers could offer stratagems for overcoming
interns’ problems in the workplace, while those with only arm’s-length understanding of
organisations gained as researchers could not mitigate such risks.
1424 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

Host liaison

UNZ’s liaison manager telephoned the host organisation’s nominated manager monthly to track the
internship from the host’s perspective. HEIs cannot assume host organisations are taking care of
students, so staff (not necessarily academic) need to visit and audit the environment.

Matching event

The risk of student (and host) dissatisfaction stems partly from their matching. UNZ reduced
this by transferring the matching process to students and host organisations themselves. Hosts
wrote a summary about their organisation and project, and students nominated which they
wished to interview for. Student CVs were forwarded to the host. During an evening event in
the semester prior to the internships, organisations briefly interviewed each interested student
and both then ranked their preferred matches; thus allowing diverse hosts and students to
explore each other’s suitability. About 90% of the students and organisations could be matched
with their first or second preferences so responsibility for matching shifted to the parties best
placed to optimise it. Although dissatisfaction still frequently occurred, harm was reduced
because parties recognised their role in it.

Insurance

A further loss reduction action is insurance against low frequency, high severity risks.
Examples include the medical costs of students injured in workplace accidents and profes-
sional indemnity insurance against claims by hosts or students against the HEI for internship-
related damage. However, such insurance may not compensate for the reputational damage
from public criticism.
Besides the limitations of insurance, the difficulty with these loss reduction processes is
their resource intensity. Supervising 15 internship students, including meetings, preparation
and follow-up, was typically a full-time teaching load for an academic. Organising matching
events is time-consuming for administrators. Due to lengthy travel time, UNZ often skipped
the self-imposed safeguard of host visits. Maintaining contact with hosts and monitoring their
relationships with interns are similarly major tasks. Moreover, such actions curtail course
scalability. Unlike classroom teaching, internship programmes and their management lack
economies of scale: the marginal cost of adding more students into internship programmes
remains relatively constant rather than reducing.

Risk assumption (Q1)

HEIs must recognise that by not specifically addressing internship risks, they implicitly
assume them. That is, they accept they must address the consequences, insofar as these fall
to them. Risk assumption is appropriate for low frequency, low severity risks such as ethics
breaches (where HEIs have well-developed practices and policies to mitigate these) but may be
problematic for risks with higher frequency and/or severity.
Table 2 matches the HEI mitigation actions in “Risk mitigation” to the risks identified in
“Application—risks in internships” for HEIs and students in types 5 and 6 internships. Note
that several actions mitigate more than one risk, especially those that close the gap between
student, host and HEI expectations and ability to deliver.
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1425

Implications and conclusions

Our typology and the conceptual clarity it provides of the risks and responsibilities associated
with work placements contribute to deeper understandings for pedagogical research in HE, and
suggest further research which we outline below. Two policy implications also emerge from
our analysis that deserve consideration by HEI senior management: risk management costs and
over-managing risk.

Costs

HEI managers may be tempted to treat internships and placements as low-cost “outsourced”
courses. However, running a low-risk internship programme incurs a very high cost for
HEIs—primarily in staff costs—because many mitigation actions require close attention to
detail for each student, host and project. All staff have limited time, and those with both the
theoretical knowledge and industry experience required are typically higher paid. Staff with
the skills to recruit host organisations, administer the placements and maintain close host
communication may also be relatively highly paid. In other words, when the risks are
appropriately managed, internships are likely to be a more expensive option per student than
classroom learning.
When HEIs only acknowledge academic staff time in supervision meetings when calculat-
ing teaching load, ignoring all the other monitoring and control work needed to deliver lower
risk, educationally beneficial internship experiences, they either overload staff or increase risk,
depending on the individual academic’s response. The logic of risk management is balancing
the cost of hazards with the cost of mitigation. Overloaded staff may not provide adequate risk
mitigation, so HEIs are implicitly assuming responsibility for higher risks with this approach.

Over-managing risk

Only limited learning about risk mitigation is possible because each internship involves new
students, hosts and tasks. Nonetheless, HEIs are expected to fulfil students’ and other
stakeholder expectations and may bow to what Power (2007) describes as cultural pressure
to be seen to manage risks. This means that although HEIs must demonstrate to boards and
regulators that they have risk management policies in place (Power et al., 2009), they need not
necessarily demonstrate that these policies have any effect in reducing harm (Power, 2006,
2007). Instead, risk management becomes a compliance process for legitimacy building—
another form of reputation—that distracts from HEIs’ core purposes to teach and research,
adds bureaucracy and cost, but renders internships and placements no safer. For example, in
the tragic case three in the introduction where an intern was shot by a terminated employee, no
policy could have mitigated that risk. Millions of difficult meetings occur daily in organisa-
tions around the globe yet only a tiny number each year end in violence, so the probability of
violence in any one meeting is miniscule. Yet an already fearful public, anxious about the
uncertainties in their modern environment and their own lack of individual control (Beck,
2014), and reinforced by media attention to the exceptional, may call for HEIs to be better
prepared to “do something”.
Instead, HEIs need to develop clear-eyed and realistic management plans for addressing the
genuine risks of internships by deciding which mitigation actions and general risk manage-
ment approaches to take—but also to recognise what not even to try to manage. Risk is
1426 Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429

implicit in internships as practice-based learning: deliberately putting students into unfamiliar

situations where learning involves shifting one’s understanding of the world, which is stressful
(Hodge et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2011). Interns need to feel emotional discomfort to learn and
there are as many possible upsides—professional, educational, personal, cultural
breakthroughs—as downsides. Thus, HEIs cannot entirely de-risk internships nor shelter
students from workplace realities without destroying educational opportunities. Even where
our typology attributes a high HEI responsibility, this is not necessarily a responsibility to
eliminate the risk. Risks can be managed responsibly, and HEIs’ primary responsibility to
foster learning may justify that.

Limitations and further research

While the risks outlined in “Application—risks in internships” may be common to many

internship types, some UNZ mitigation strategies in “Risk mitigation” may not be
generalisable to different institutional structures. We have also noted limitations in the sense
of feasibility and efficacy at the end of the frequency and loss reduction “Frequency reduction
(Q2)” and “Loss reduction (reducing severity) (Q3)”. Although we have covered broad policy
issues and focused on moral and ethical responsibilities, which are more generalisable than
legal responsibilities, even these are not universal and local legal structures still matter,
meaning HEI responsibilities and responses will vary by jurisdiction. The role of ethics in
student placements may require further academic attention and scrutiny because these situa-
tions remain undocumented in HE research.
Further research is needed into how HEIs can balance the risks involved in giving students
space to make mistakes and learn while keeping them safe. Building on our paper’s conceptual
approach and typography, more research can be done to identify and quantify common work
placement risks by country and educational field. How do HEIs currently identify and manage
such risks? Overall, better clarity is needed on HEIs’ responsibilities; to understand, for
example, whether the hazards of internships are greater for diverse students.

Conclusions

In a risk-focused climate, we continue to emphasise the broad benefits of student internships;

integrated and applied learning, transitions to future as well as current employment, and
connecting the academy with the community. Internships, nonetheless, clearly carry greater
risk than on-campus learning. This paper demonstrates practical ways to mitigate risk without
seeking to make internships completely safe by insulating them from the uncertainties,
learning and growth opportunities they provide.
This paper contributes to HE theory and practice by conceptualising internship risks and
HEI responsibility for them by theorising a typology of student placement experiences.
Exacerbated by students’ inexperience, project variations and host organisation imperatives,
internship risks are impossible to eliminate. Our risk matrix analysis shows how the frequency
or severity of many internship risks can be mitigated, but often at a high price in human
resources. HEIs need to manage the risks that are worth managing and assume the conse-
quences of others.
Higher Education (2022) 83:1409–1429 1427

Data availability Not applicable.

Code availability Not applicable.

Declarations

Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.

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