Internships are an important step to post-graduate employment, but the educational cost can make completing a summer internship challenging.
Internships teach students valuable employment skills and give them opportunities to network. Penn State Beaver encourages students to take advantage of these opportunities to increase the likelihood of successful career placement after they graduate. Some majors require internships. However, students who earn credit for internships must pay for those credits, and they are not covered by financial aid. Adding to the challenge, there are employers who do not offer paid internships.
“A lot of students don’t even know the cost of enrollment for summer internships is not covered by student aid, like their other fall/spring classes are,” said Hilary O’Toole, the internship coordinator for the Communications Department at Penn State Beaver. “This places serious financial stress on them when it’s March, they’ve found their summer placement, and then they realize they have to come up with X amount of dollars by July, and they don’t have it.”
O’Toole said some students must delay their graduation date in order to complete a fall internship that would be covered by financial aid. This means students can’t enter the workforce for another four to five months. “This, in turn, can mean longer dependency on family members for support and incurring more debt.”
Penn State Beaver has developed a campus fund to assist students in need with the expenses associated with unpaid internships, allowing students to graduate on track and become part of Penn State’s influential alumni network.
“Summer scholarship opportunities have helped a number of my students in the past year, and it’s amazing that we acknowledge the hurdles they face so close to the end of their undergraduate career at Penn State,” O’Toole said.
Penn State Beaver has many students who have found post-graduate employment because of their internships. Two examples from the Spring 2021 graduating class are Zain Ansari and Joshua Hetzer, both of whom graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business.
Ansari had an internship with Price Waterhouse Coopers. He will be attending Temple University in the fall to pursue a Master of Science in Accountancy. Ansari has accepted an accounting position with Price Waterhouse Coopers in Philadelphia in 2023, upon completion of his graduate degree.
Hetzer completed an internship with Farmers Building and Savings Bank and accepted a position with them before he graduated.
To help Penn State Beaver students afford their internships, visit our donation page. Choose “other” and type in “student internships.”