W. P. Carey internship program bridges gap from academia to workforce

With internships becoming scarcer and students needing experience before entering the workforce, it can be a challenge. The W. P. Carey School of Business has an innovative co-op program designed to bridge the gap between academic learning and professional experience. They offer year-long, paid positions partnering with companies that might otherwise cut internship programs.

Dean Ohad Kadan, from W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU, and Megh Patranabis, a student, joined “Arizona Horizon” to talk about the W. P. Carey Internship.

“We have a new internship program called co-op,” Dean Kadan said. “A co-op is a middle ground between a short internship and a full-time position where students take a pause of their undergraduate education for a semester and pursue the position with a company. So traditional internships are two months and full-time positions are longer. Corporations are looking for more meaningful experiences, meaningful ways to basically experience the students, learn about the students and see if they want to offer full-time positions.”

Unlike traditional internships, ASU’s co-op program offers year-long positions averaging $23 per hour, providing students with deeper, more impactful experiences in the workplace. This gives students an edge and addresses companies’ concerns about the ROI of shorter internship programs.

The school says 60 to 70% of co-op students receive full-time job offers from their placements. Some companies taking part are Honeywell and Johnson and Johnson.

“In my co-op experience,” Patranabis said, “I’ve been working with Honeywell Aerospace; a six-month experience I started in January, and I’ll be continuing until June. I took a pause on classes and started working full-time. I’ve had weeks where I went over full-time just to get a good idea of the environment and work on my projects.”