Insight on How Socio-Economic Minority Student Perceive the Internship Program: A Case Study in South-Eastern of Students

Dr. Tsou, Hui-fen, Associate Professor of National Taitung Junior College, Taiwan

ABSTRACT

It intended to examine the difference between expectations and perceptions of hospitality socio-economic minority students towards their internship program, and to assess the relationship between the difference and overall satisfaction. Altogether, a total of 365 usable questionnaires were returned. The outcomes show that five internship factors of home economic position, parents views, hotel director, personal professional techniques, and colleagues led to student overall satisfaction. Based on the findings, recommendations for hospitality schools, industry, and students were provided in order to enhance the quality of internship programs.

INTRODUCTION

Since Farinelli and Mann (1994) comment that students themselves believe that internships complement their academic work. Later, 1998, Hymon-Parker also examined and found that internship programs do bridge the gap between education and the actual work environment. Internships really do benefit industries by providing inexpensive sources of competent assistance motivating present employees, and creating opportunities to cultivate prospective future employees (Coco, 2000). However, other researchers (Zigli, 1982; Prato, 1996; Shirley, 1998; IOMA’s Compensation Forum, 2002) look at internships negatively. Zigli (1982) argues that some internship programs are not only unchallenging but also unsatisfactory, and have negative effects on students. Some students argue that they feel bored during internship, and others complain that they sometimes have to work over forty, or sixty to seventy, hours per week. They feel that they are only cheap labor force within their places of internship. The noun of “socio-economic minority” in Taiwan has been defined as “ not only for those “underprivileged” group, but also those who own less power of controlling society, or less opportunity to accept education , to pursuit wealth, and success that those whom people called ”majority” group.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The origin of internship Four thousand years ago, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi provided that artisans teach their crafts to youth (Ainley & Rainbird, 1999). When youth in earlier centuries achieved the status of craft workers, they became important members in their societies. Today’s apprenticeships are still keeping alive knowledge of many crafts and skills that in other times were passed on largely by family tradition. Fathers taught their sons the crafts in generation after generation. Furthermore, The United States Department of Labor also describes the apprenticeship as “a combination of on-the-job training and related instruction in which workers learn the practical and theoretical aspects of a highly skilled occupation.” If the apprentice is a minor, the parent or guardian also signs. However, an apprenticeship is still different from an internship. Flexner’s (1910) points out that an apprenticeship allows a student to approach a practicing situation without prior knowledge whereas an internship follows an organized period of learning. The first definition of internship was also presented in Webster’s Dictionary (http://www.webster-dictionary.net/ definition/internship) in 1913, which defined it as “The period of time during which a novice in a field serves in a subordinate capacity and continues to gain experience; the learning period before one becomes an expert.” Pierson’s (1959) study notes that the education of American businessman has utilized the internship as a means of preparing their

trainees to assume full professional responsibility upon graduation.

Taiwan education system and internship After the Sino-Japanese War, the Ching Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Makuan in 1895. Japan implemented a colonial educational policy which aimed at assimilation. The educational policy supported three levels: Japanese emigration, Han people, and Taiwan Aborigines. This assimilation educational policy not only suppressed traditional Chinese education, but it also introduced Western-style elementary education. Taiwanese children, however, had limited opportunities to receive education because of the segregation that was adopted in the school system. In 1945, at the end of World War II, Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China (ROC.) The ROC government retained the school faculties and continued to use classrooms and school facilities from the Japanese era, but it abolished the policies of discrimination. The Chinese academic system was adapted, and education was infused with the spirit of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's Three Principles of the People (nationalism, democracy, and people's well-being). Also, the education ladder of 6-3-3-4, six year of elementary school, three years each for junior and senior high school, and four years for university/college education, was introduced into Taiwan in 1949 (http://www.edu.tw.) After 1980, the Taiwanese educational system entered an era of transition and reform because the nation’s industrial structure had shifted from a labor-intensive to a capital and technology-intensive base. Because of the dramatic changes in economics, and the labor shortage in the food and beverage industries, the Ministry of established the Department of Food and Beverage Management in the National Tam-Shui Senior Vocational High School in 1985. During the three-year program, students are selected to participate in the internship program during their last semester. In Taiwan, Technological and Vocational Education (TVE) includes both technical and handicraft courses taught in junior high schools, senior vocational high schools, and junior colleges as well as in technological institutes and science and technology-oriented universities. There are over 1.3 million students who are included under this system. And in 1994, in response to the request of senior vocational high school teachers of Food and Beverage Management (FBM), the National Kaohsiung Hospitality College (NKHC) was established. Since then, numerous private senior vocational high schools have started to establish FBM programs, and some institutes or universities of science and technology offer similar programs. Since then, over 200 senior vocational high school offered courses in FBM and over100 colleges provided similar departments and training. And almost senior vocational high schools, especially private ones, offer internships as their instrument of recruitment. Both two-year colleges and four-year universities offer the FBM programs with internship during the third- semester and senior with a total of 1200- and 2400- hours in internship as a required core course. (http://www.tajen.edu.tw.) Now the NKHC has been upgrade to NKHU, it is because this was the first professional school devoted exclusively to food service and travel industry management in Taiwan . The perceived advantages of internship Shure (2001) states that internship programs for the students are not only providing work experiences but also concrete knowledge. The author also stresses (2001) that students must complete required courses before taking the internship program. Internships also help schools resolve the high expenses involved in providing needed facilities and equipment (Krasilovsky and Lendt, 1996; Hodgson, 1999). According to Krasilovsky and Lendt (1996), the students also get the chance to meet their future bosses, and have a higher chance of finding a job through the internship program. Daugherty (2001) writes that students get previews of their futures through the internship program. He further states (2002) that the internship allows students to apply theory to matter-of-fact situations. Cates-Mclver (1999) also concurs, noting that the internship program offers students opportunities to apply knowledge learned in the classroom into the real work situation. He concludes that interns can see the direct relationship between their majors under academic training and jobs in industries. Dr. Jerome, a professor of Temple University, strongly argues the importance of the concept of “learning by doing” from John Dewey. He writes that interns attain the understanding of academic theories through the actual situation—the internship. Internships also provide employers with an effective labor pool (Stanton, 1992; Krasilovsky, 1996; Cannon and Arnold, 1998; Terry-Azios, 1999; Swift and Kent, 1999; Hazelwood, 2004). Cannon assumes (1998) that industries

benefit from low labor cost and new ideas brought in by the internship program. According to Swift and Kent (1999), not only do industries gain skillful and talent employees, but they also get flexible labor resources which will affect their budget for labor cost. A report related to the wage of internship (“Internship,”1996) explains that even though interns are not entitled to pay during the internship programs, they still gain valuable experience and professional on-the-job training. On the contrary, Swift and Kent (1999) suggest that industries should at least pay the minimum wage to interns.

The perceived disadvantages of internship There were few studies discussed the disadvantage of internship. Shirley (1998) proposes making a table showing both strength and weakness of internship from both the educators’ view and the industry’s view. The main weakness argument by the educators is that the internship program lacks adequate placement sites for students. Conversely, the main weakness argued by the industry is that the internship is not well-planned. Quite interestingly, schools think that all faults are due to the industry which cannot support effective placement sites for interns; and the industry push as all the weakness onto the school which has no well-planned internship. Shirley (1998) also suggests that both school and industry need to gain a better understanding of what each needs and expects. The school and industry must sit down and talk to each other in order to clarify the goal and the content of the internship.

Students’ attitudes towards the internship There were many research mentioned that intern attitude towards their internship. In Brickey’ studies (1998) stated the internship benefits intern in the area of learning experiences. The intern can apply what he/she has learned in school. On the contrary, Mark Roberts, the director of Talent Acquisition of General Motors, stresses that students have to view their internships as opportunities to gain employment instead of ways to gain experience only (as cited in Hazelwood, 2004). Ciofalo (1992) indicates that intern can develop a relationship between theory and practice during his/her internship. Interns also have a catalyst for personal growth those students without an internship lack (Filipczak, 1998). Besides personal growth, Pierson (1992) proves that interns progress in interpersonal communication. He also mentions that interns learn the organizational management and politics through internships.

Socio-economic minority of Taiwan Socio-economic minority has a number of meanings. Hwang’s(2000) study stated that “underprivileged” groups might not be “minority” group, however, the “minority” group probably means those who own less power of controlling society, or less opportunity to accept education , to pursuit wealth, and success that those whom people called ”majority” group. Schiller (1966) found that the major cause of poverty is lacking of education opportunity. American scholars Marshall and Tucker (1992) also mentioned that except of education problem, poverty and family disruption had profound effect on the American education. Therefore, according to past research, we discussed and segment the Taiwan socio-economic minority group into the following three types: Type 1: The poverty line To define the poverty gap ratio is by nation. In 2007, Taiwan government announced that about 200 thousand people were conform to the Taiwan poverty line, compare to the other 21 million people. However, Hsiao’s (2003) study pointed out there were “new poor social class” who owns working capability but does not have any working income. Type 2: Occupies the area In Taiwan, the boarder area means the “back mountain county”, “remote districts county” and “Island County”. According to the basic competence test for junior high school student, Chou and Tseng (2006) argue that students who live in these border areas had made them as a minority group compare to those who live in urban districts. Type 3: Culturally disadvantaged Because of culture difference, the minority include aborigine culture, birth province culture, foreign bride culture and new Taiwan generation. These mentioned above not only yielding education problem, but also the difficult of

communication, life adaptation, and employment. As everybody known, the problem of separate a generation of education are very common in Taiwan, especially in those border area which mentioned above . Research design: 1. What do socio-economic minority students expect prior to commencing the internship? 2. What do socio-economic minority students perceive after the internship? 3. What is the overall internship satisfaction? 4. Which type of the internship program in terms of the curriculum design is the most preferable to socio-economic minority students?

METHODOLOGY

Instrumentation This research adopted both qualitative and quantitative design. First, the population statistic variables were accumulated from the existing reviews and government announcement. Then, three sources were used to generate first qualitative scale items: the past literature reviews, focusing groups, and internship satisfaction questions. By Delphi method, three times open-close question, and finally developed quantitative questionnaire. The focusing group included five internship coordinators and five students of the department of hospitality university/college in Taiwan who had just completed their internships were invited to review the qualitative scale items. All above were for this research more clarity and alignment. For the questionnaire reliability, a pilot study was conducted with 25 hospitality students of National Taitung Junior College, who had just completed a 6-month internship. Scale reliability analysis showed that the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the respective 37-item of both expectation construct and perception construct were .91 and .92.

Measure The questionnaire contained two sections. Section 1 collected the socio-demographic data of students which are including gender, age, name of school, term of internship(3-, 6-, 12-month), home economic position, parents’ views, internship hotel, personal professional techniques(license and certificate), and colleagues socio-background, and so on. Section 2 evaluated students’ expectation and perception of their internship based on the study of Tsou (2005). There were 37-item internship variables in both expectation and perception measuring scale.

Samples All the respondent students have been finished their internship which at least 3-month duration. For pragmatic reasons, a selective sampling method was used to identify the five major hospitality universities/colleges. The universities/ colleges are National Taitung Junior College(located at back mountain county), Taiwan Hospitality and Tourism College(located at back mountain county), Meiho University(located at remote districts county), I-Shou University(located at south of Taiwan, Kaohsiung county), and (located at south of Taiwan, ). Altogether 450 questionnaires distributed and 365 were collected. The response rate was 81.1%. Principal components analysis and Varimax rotation method were used to the factor analyze the 37 internship variables.

Findings and discussion Table 1 show that 365 respondent students, both female (55.1%) and male (44.9%) are even. More than 70% of respondent students’ age is from 18 to 24. About 40% of the back mountain county college respondents and 50% from the remote district county while the remaining 11.8% from Kaohsiung County. The majority of respondent students had taken 12-month internship (77.8%). Almost a quarter of respondents are aborigine, and the separate a generation of education percentage is over 60%. MANOVA analysis showed that samples responding to the survey did not differ among the five institutions in the demographic variables.

Table 1: Profile of respondent students (n=365) Variable Frequency Percentage Gender Female 201 55.1 Male 164 44.9 Age <18 82 22.5 18-20 125 34.2 21-24 143 39.2 >24 15 4.1 Institutions NTC 38 10.4 TH&TC 99 27.1 MU 98 26.9 Tajen U 87 23.8 ISU 43 11.8 Internship duration 3-month 43 11.8 6-month 38 10.4 12-month 284 77.8 Perceptive Family income Under and Meet the poverty line 258 70.7 Above the poverty line 107 29.3 Family income Under and Meet the poverty line 226 62.1 Above the poverty line 139 38.0 Ethnic background Aborigine 85 23.3 Non-aborigine 280 76.7 Living w/parents (separate a generation of education) Yes 126 34.5 No 239 65.5 For explaining the perception means, expectation means, and gap means regarding the internship taken by the socio-economic minority students, the result shows SM students had the higher expectation than the rest of students. For the perception of internship, there was no significant difference between them. Principal components factor analysis was employed to analyze the 37 internship variables. Table 2 and table 3 show both SM and non-SM students’ Eigenvalues and suggested that five factors were abstracted for interpretation of the scale. The five factors explained 76.1% /78.1% of the overall variance with KMO measure are .83 and .79, which were higher than the .60(Hair et al., 1998).

Table 2: Factor analysis on gap means of internship variables—socio-economic minority students (n=226) Variables Eigen-value %of var. Cum. Var. % Reli. Coeff. Factor 1: home economic position 4.762 25.4 25.4 .78 Factor 2: colleagues 1.898 16.7 42.1 .88 Factor 3: hotel director 1.478 15.2 57.3 .71 Factor 4: personal profession Techniques 1.334 9.9 67.2 .69 Factor 5: parents view 1.101 8.9 76.1 .79

Table 3: Factor analysis on gap means of internship variables—non-socio-economic minority students (n=139) Variables Eigen-value %of var. Cum. Var. % Reli. Coeff. Factor 1: hotel director 4.587 28.4 28.4 .81 Factor 2: colleagues 1.760 16.7 45.1 .83 Factor 3: job 1.334 13.2 58.3 .75 Factor 4: resume 1.256 10.9 69.2 .72 Factor 5: personal profession Techniques 1.111 8.9 78.1 .81

Linear regression was conducted with the overall internship satisfaction as a dependent variable, and the five factors as independent variables. Table 4 shows for SM students group, there were only three factors statistically correlated with overall internship.

Table 4. Regression analysis of internship factors on overall satisfaction—socio-economic minority students (n=226) Internship Factors ß Beta T VIF T Factor 1: home economic position .211 .199 3.298** 1.667 .781 Factor 2: colleagues .203 .189 3.199** 1.597 .776 Factor 3: hotel director .201 .185 3.089 1.446 .698 Constant 3.558 -- 90.119 Standard error=.498, F=30.789, Significant F=.0001 **p<0.01

Dependent variable: overall satisfaction; independent variables: three internship factors; ß: unstandardized coefficient; beta: standardized coefficient; VIF: variable inflation factor; T: tolerance

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The study tried to answer the following questions: What do socio-economic minority students expect prior to commencing the internship? What do socio-economic minority students perceive after the internship? What is the overall internship satisfaction? Which type of the internship program in terms of the curriculum design is the most preferable to socio-economic minority students? Findings of SM students had a quite different expectation and perception on their internship. There were only three major factors—“hotel director, colleagues, and personal profession techniques” were meeting the two group students. For the SM students, the majority factor was still the “home economic position”, whereas which was not even any of the non-SM students’ abstract factor.

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