| Chapter 1: | Africa's 21st-Century Renaissance in Higher Education: The Need for Strategic Planning |
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educational competitive advantages based, in part, on their distinctive personal competencies or strengths.
A critical part of the internship process involves a company supervisor (internship provider) formally evaluating the student's internship performance. The process ends when the student submits a formal internship report that is graded by the HoD in his or her school. The internship provider, for his or her part, must adhere to certain minimum expectations if the entire internship experience is to produce intended results. At the very minimum, the employer must make available to the student a position that is meaningful, challenging, supervised, and career related. As Orchowski (2005) pointed out, the intern's work “has to be a real learning experience—ideally using their university-earned skills on real-time projects—in exchange for university credit” (p. 3). Another requirement, given Africa's high unemployment and low gross national product per capita, is that the employer not only provide some form of compensation for the internship period but must also complete an evaluation form prior to the end of the work assignment—called the “employer internship evaluation form.” We expand on the employer evaluation form in the next section.
In table 1.1 we provide a self-explanatory summary of student, provider (employer), and educational institution benefits that accrue from internship programs. In presenting these benefits, the intent is not to claim that all internships are successful. In fact, as Swift and Kent (1999) pointed out, a cautionary note worth making is that some internships can be unchallenging, unrewarding, and even counterproductive for the student. Be that as it may, the depth and breadth of benefits presented in table 1.1 present internships as an overwhelming opportunity and recommendation for all stakeholders involved, especially in Africa, where educational and employment opportunities still lag disturbingly behind the rest of the world.
The Employer Evaluation Form
The importance of employer feedback on the performance of interns has already been alluded to in this chapter. In order to capture a reasonable