Part One: Colleges and Universities Should Rethink Experiential Learning and Internships

Over the last few years of consulting, I’ve worked with several schools that are trying to figure out how to scale experiential learning as a core initiative and differentiator for their value proposition. A few universities have approached the same challenge a bit differently and proclaimed that their goal is to offer “internships for all students.” While these goals may sound similar at first glance, they are actually trying to accomplish two different things.

Experiential learning is designed to help students explore potential career paths and discover where their interests may lie. These are engagement initiatives. Internships and other forms of applied work, by contrast, are meant to give students real professional experience they can place on their resumes. Both are important, but they serve different purposes, and universities often blur the distinction between them.

Figuring out how to provide experiential learning and internships for all students is a massive challenge, and I’ve become increasingly concerned that university leaders are not yet asking the right questions if the ultimate goal is maximizing student employability upon graduation.

If a university president came to me and asked for help ensuring that all students had access to internships and experiential learning opportunities, I would start with two questions.

First, what is the precise outcome we are solving for?

There are many effective strategies that provide students with enriching experiences that a student would not necessarily place on their resume but are still valuable parts of the college journey. Work shadowing, road trips, mentoring programs, alumni panels, and on-campus industry conferences all help students better understand what different careers look like and how their interests might align with them.

Experiential learning through engagement programs plays an important role in initiating a process of discovery. These experiences are fun and help students explore possibilities and begin to imagine what life after graduation might look like.

But discovery is not the same as preparation.

Employers ultimately hire based on demonstrated experience. They want to see evidence that a student has worked on real problems and contributed to something tangible. Exposure helps students decide what they might want to do; applied work experience shows employers that they can actually do it.

In many institutional conversations, these two outcomes are conflated. Universities often point to experiential learning initiatives as evidence that they are preparing students for the workforce, when in reality those programs are primarily designed to support exploration rather than employability.

If the true objective is maximizing employability, then universities must ensure that students graduate with resume-caliber work experience aligned with what they hope to do first after receiving their diplomas.

Second, are we doing this through new investment or by reallocating existing resources?

One of my consistent observations is that institutions often assemble task forces or steering committees to tackle this challenge, but far fewer make meaningful new investments or redirect existing funding to support what is, in reality, a highly resource-intensive endeavor.

Creating opportunities for students to engage in meaningful work requires coordination, supervision, employer relationships, and in many cases financial support for student wages. Without dedicated infrastructure, the goal of internships or applied work experiences at scale quickly runs into roadblocks.

We are also living in a critical moment for colleges and universities. For some audiences, skepticism about the value of a college degree is growing, while at the same time artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape the hiring landscape. Many roles once considered entry-level will likely be automated or fundamentally redesigned, and institutions must plan and adjust for this almost-certain reality. Without a meaningful shift, students will graduate without the credentials that carry weight and market value.

This reality creates a fundamental challenge, because the vast majority of universities are not currently structured to meet this objective at scale.

Our current moment calls for a shift in how colleges and universities think about responsibility. At the senior leadership level, there must be an acknowledgment that ensuring students graduate with resume-caliber work experience aligned with their early career goals is as important as classroom success.

Colleges should also rethink internships themselves, particularly their continued reliance on the academic-credit model. Internships for credit most often depend on semester-long, faculty- and registrar-approved placements that fit neatly into academic calendars and departmental requirements. Although the academic-credit model is intended to provide structure and oversight, it often ends up dramatically limiting scale, flexibility, and access.

If universities are serious about ensuring that every student graduates with meaningful professional experience, they must move beyond the idea that this work can be managed primarily through steering committees and career services offices as they exist today.

Please share your thoughts and experiences. I welcome all comments including disagreement.

In Part Two of this series, I will make the case for a new organizational unit designed specifically to facilitate and scale resume-caliber work opportunities, and in Part Three, I will discuss how career services must evolve within this new ecosystem.