Do Internships Matter?: the Impact of Internship Participation on Employability

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the effect of internship participation on university graduates’ overall employability and uses Korea’s Graduate Occupational Mobility Survey data in order to track university graduates’ employment prospects. Our findings reveal that participation in internships increases the employability of young adults, and that this impact is slightly greater for male college graduates than for female college graduates. Meanwhile, in order to supplement the reliability of our results, we conducted additional analytical tests, including a placebo test and an intensive sensitivity analysis test. It turns out that the estimated treatment effects on the placebo outcomes are of a small magnitude, with no statistical significance. In the analysis which includes simulated confounders, it appears that the risk of omitting relevant confounders does not threaten the baseline estimates.