Managing International Internships

Responding to the Growing Demand for International Work Experience

This paper looks at the case of Reutlingen University (Hochschule Reutlingen), a university with a reputation for international student mobility. It examines how the university strives to fulfil its mandate to prepare‘industry-ready’ graduates for the global industry by providing an international practice-oriented education. The key focus is on its efforts to establish credit-bearing internship programmes for international students, an area where the institution has ramped up its activities in recent years. Internships for international students is understood to encompass both domestic internships for international students (exchange and degree-seeking students) as well as internships abroad for home-grown degree-seeking students. The paper presents models and approaches that seek to ensure the quality of the international internship experience. It discusses challenges that the university has encountered on the way and makes suggestions about how to create internship opportunities against the backdrop of competing demands and expectations.