‘Many countries have a long history of degrees that combine off-campus work placements with on-campus academic study. But research indicates that the extent to which this is part of the typical student experience varies significantly.’

‘Survey data published by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information at The Open University last year indicate that the UK has one of the lowest rates of participation in work placements in Europe, at around 30 per cent. The only country where the figure was lower was Italy, at 22 per cent.’

‘In contrast, the figure was 84 per cent in France and 87 per cent in the Netherlands.’

Rogier Boogers, academic information officer at the University of Amsterdam, explains: “Higher education in the Netherlands is set up with a binary system: the traditional academic universities, like the University of Amsterdam, and the institutions focused on vocational education, for instance the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. At the vocationally oriented institutions, almost 100 per cent of the students undertake an internship.”

‘At the University of Amsterdam, a six-month internship is optional for bachelor’s degree students.’

‘In the US, courses that alternate work placements with university study are commonly known as cooperative education and are offered by about 500 higher education institutions. At Drexel University, a private university in Philadelphia, this form of education has been running for 93 years. The majority of Drexel students take a five-year bachelor’s degree, during which they leave the campus to take part in three six-month work placements: once in the second year, once in the third year and once in the fourth year.’

“The big advantage of the model is that students can try out different areas of work and leave university with a clear idea of what they want to do”, says Peter Franks, senior associate vice-provost for career education in Drexel’s Steinbright Career Development Center.

“It’s a chance for students to test what they’re learning in the workplace, to understand the relevance of it and to learn more about themselves and their career interests.

“They’ve had 30 interviews by the time they graduate. They know how to interview and they know how to job search. They have a CV that is substantial with professional work experience.”

However, “In the UK, figures suggest a decline over the past 12 years in the number of sandwich courses combining study and work placements. According to a joint Universities UK and CBI report published last year (Future Fit: Preparing Graduates for the World of Work), 10.5 per cent of all undergraduates in 1994–95 were classified as being on a sandwich course, but by 2006-07 the figure had dropped to 6.5 per cent.”

For more from this article, click here.

“I am currently 3 weeks into my placement with State Street and am here writing my first blog. The question on everyone’s lips for me is: so how is it going? To them, I am reserved. It hasn’t started as quickly as I anticipated, and maybe that’s a fault of my own for being a very eager person. But inside I really feel like this is the first stepping stone into a long and successful career, which I cannot wait to progress along. The other question is: how was your first day? This, as I’m sure most people will say was incredibly exciting but at the same time I did struggle to remember that I was only an intern and nothing was expected of me yet. This is something I would recommend to people moving into a placement: yes it will be scary but you’re a new employee and expected to know nothing, this was how I felt!

The people at State Street have entirely made the placement what it is so far, very friendly and approachable, whilst professional at their desk. For me, the people were always going to be the most important part of my internship, and I am lucky that it is one of the finer qualities of State Street. I assume this aspect is to credit for their terrific client reputation and success as a custodial bank. Moreover, the transition period over which I am shadowing the current intern is paying off, and I have a lot to owe Neill for being a very good teacher. This time next week, Neill will have left and the responsibility will be on my shoulders, I am nearly ready to take over.

My job title exists as Global Research Intern and I am responsible for a few specifics. On a daily basis I will send out research publications which I will update from our raw data sources and send out to clients who have been in contact with the sales team and benefit from our research. These are often a few pages worth of charts which update the client about what is happening in their chosen markets or global regions for example. The work is heavily based on Excel, which up until now I thought I was mildly competent at, however I had only ever saw the tip of the iceberg! The learning of this program happens very quickly as I am using it all day. Aside from this, I will be conducting ad-hoc prices of research for my manager over the coming year. I have already finished my first which will aid the induction of a new employee due to start in 2 weeks time, this was a really satisfying exercise.

One of the other qualities of an internship is that there are other students in the same boat as you, so being encouraged to meet up with them for drinks at the end of each week was a godsend. You feel like an outsider when in a new company and the average age of an employee is 30+, however an evening with the interns will remind you what it feels like to be in the union bar! I encourage all interns to meet up with other interns at the institution they are placed at; it will improve the experience tenfold.

On the whole, my placement has started great! Working on Canary Wharf is a dream; teamed with the company’s credentials, I am very happy! I do come home tired and eager to relax, but each evening I cannot wait to get back into the city, this is enough to tell me that it’s going well!”

Find out more from Ben and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!

Over the next few weeks, you’ll start to notice a range of new improvements and developments to the RateMyPlacement website. Starting tomorrow, we are very excited to be launching a brand new and improved search engine making it even easier to navigate your way around the thousands of reviews, companies and placement/internship vacancies that will be on the website during the 2010-11 campaign.

We will also be launching new user dashboards giving greater control and personalisation to the thousands of new undergraduates who will sign up and use RateMyPlacement from September onwards.

All will be revealed tomorrow so be sure to sign in and check back then!

Still to come – an improved sign up process, a brand new homepage and an incredibly cool iPhone/iPod Touch system! Watch this space over the coming weeks!

“My first few weeks at GSK have gone by so quickly and I think the best thing about it is how varied my job has been so far and how friendly and welcoming everyone is!

I have now been here 10 weeks and done so many different things! At first it was strange getting into the role as I don’t have a manager who delegates jobs for me to do every day and takes a more proactive approach. Initially I was worried I wouldn’t know what to do with myself each day but I have never once felt like that since coming to work and have found that by ensuring I am always busy I have in fact ended up with so many different things to be getting on with.

I found it a lot easier to get in to the role than I thought as I had an official one week handover but the student I was taking over from was still in the same office for 3 weeks after this helping me with anything I needed. This period was really helpful and prepared me as best as possible to begin the job properly.

One of my first important tasks was to write a global news story for the GSK intranet website. This story is posted to employees all over the world (i.e. 100,000 people.) Although this was only internal I was quite nervous about the amount of people that would read it, especially senior management from my department. However, I ensured that I got as much feedback as possible before sending the final copy and so was happy with the final piece.

I have been working a lot on a project to design interactive maps for our website. The Maps will explain all of the programmes my team (Global Community Partnerships) supports and so I am going through the process of researching everything and speaking to managers to find out what they would like to see included on the map. I am really enjoying this project as it is really helping me to develop my knowledge regarding the work my team does. I also feel I have been given a lot of responsibility on it which can be nerve-wracking but also really empowering.

My other main project is updating our internal website as the whole company has just converted to a new intranet system and so everything needs updating. This is not only challenging my literacy and marketing skills but also developing my IT skills.

Alongside these main projects I have been doing smaller scale jobs such as emailing people to organise Orange Days (Days where employees volunteer for charities.) I have also been emailing people to organise Macmillan coffee morning within GSK. Finally, quite a key part of my job has involved attending events run by our partners. For example, the opening of the ‘Who Am I exhibition’ at the Science Museum as GSK funded this. Also the opening for the Summer exhibition at the Royal Academy as we are corporate members and attending an exhibition at the Strand Gallery with the National Down syndrome Association. All of these events have been really enjoyable and also something complete new as they involve a lot of networking with senior people from all sorts of organizations.”

Find out more from Anna and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!

“I’ve now been at Hays for 3 weeks now, and have settled well. My team has been very helpful in settling to the workplace, and have instantly made friends with those in my team. Working as a resourcer in the Banking Operations team, I source candidates for roles accross Back, Middle and Front office in Investment Banking, Hedge Funds, Broking, Trading and asset management.

I particularly deal with temporary placements from 3 months plus, but also interact with Banking Ops perm teams in referring suitable candidates to them also, as and when I come accross them. The working atmosphere at Hays is encouraging and supportive, as well as having a certain ‘buzz’ about it.

As I work to recruit for purely Tier 1 financial institutions and banks, there is also the element of client-facing and contact-building, through on-site visits to recently placed candidates, learning talks held on-site at Hays by external professionals in the industry, as well as interacting with the on-site recruiting teams at the banks, in which Hays contracts their employment to.

The banks that we recruit for include the likes of Bank of America, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Goldmans Sachs, Citi, amongst more. In the first few days I would say I was given the opportunity to land myself right in the deep-end of the job, and interact regularly with candidates looking for roles and new career changes. In being exposed more and more to this element of the job, I have this week managed to help two candidates get interviews at UBS and Deutsche Bank.”

Find out more from Rishi and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!

I am delighted to announce that RateMyPlacement.co.uk has been named in the Startups 100!

The Startups 100 “identifies the UK’s most innovative, inspiring and ground-breaking new companies. The list celebrates the 100 most exciting, promising, disruptive new businesses and entrepreneurs shaping the start-up market right now.”

Not bad eh! We are in good company too, with well known companies such as Seatwave, Shortlist Media, Reggae Reggae Sauce and Zoopla.co.uk all making the list. We have been ranked 56th – next year we’re aiming for a top 10 finish…

Click here to view the full Startups 100.

Keep up the good work Team!

‘To start things off, I want to give you a short bio of myself, which will help you create an overview about me before I go into detail about my placement!

Well first things first, my name’s Aaron Sullivan, I’m 20, I absolutely can’t live without music, I design a lot of digital art and love technology. I am also a student at the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham. I have been at the University for 2 years now and have loved every aspect of University life. But, there’s always a but isn’t there, have decided on a change of plan for a year. I have decided on a year out in industry to help me improve my chances of getting a job after University and to get some well needed experience. As well as these two reasons, I also didn’t fancy finishing off my degree just quite yet, the past two years have gone way too fast in my opinion and I don’t think I’m ready to leave just yet.

The process of actually finding a placement was definitely a challenge to say the least. I first started out looking for placements within games companies across the UK, about 100 were contacted in one form or another. After absolutely no luck within this industry I moved towards web design and graphics within Cheltenham, again with no luck due to a lack of responses I moved on. It finally came down to software, which in my mind, after 11 weeks of placement is the right industry for me. If you get down from poor responses from companies, no luck from interviews, don’t worry, you just need to keep on top of your game and keep trying. If you keep adapting your CV for specific job roles, prepare yourself for interviews and get your CV in the right door then you will eventually get the placement you have been searching for, it just doesn’t usually appear after a couple of weeks of searching. I say this from experience.

On the 1st of June 2010, I started my first day at Trigger Software Ltd in Cheltenham. I had seen the office in one or two pictures and briefly on my interview before, but in the flesh as a working environment, it really is a nice place to work. I was given a desk, a computer was setup for me and the usual aspects were created for me over the course of the day, an email account etc. From then on until now I have been doing absolutely all sorts. Over the 10 weeks that I have been at Trigger I have done a mixture of testing, support, some programming, some office admin, backups and lots more, all extremely interesting aspects. At first I did think, “Yeah, get to do programming straight away”, but now looking back, It has been extremely beneficial to get an overview of all areas of the company before going deep down into code.

Well there’s the overview I promised you, and some detail chucked in for good measure. My next blog posts on RateMyPlacement will be in detail every few weeks, so If you want to read more about how I’m doing, keep looking back every so often.’

Find out more from Aaron and our other Guest Bloggers in the next couple of weeks!

The views expressed below are not those of RateMyPlacement, nor the BBC, but the original author. We have included some of the opinions, but the full article can be seen by clicking here.

“Q: What is the law on people working as unpaid volunteers?

The national minimum wage act is quite clear. Anybody doing work for a company needs to paid the minimum wage.

It doesn’t spell out what work is. But if you are doing pre-determined tasks, you’re expected to be in the office, you have deadlines and your work is monitored – things like that would all count as work.

Work experience, by contrast, is about shadowing, going to meetings with people, things where you are not contributing to the business of the organisation.”

“Have many employers been abusing internships and unpaid volunteers?

From our understanding, a lot of interns working at the moment would have quite a strong case if they went to tribunals.

It’s a question of whether someone wants to take that stand and take the risk.

We are calling on trade unions to seek out good test cases to support people in that process.”

What are your thoughts? Do you think interns are exposed or is it part of the process? Comment below!

A great article in The Guardian describes how students can make money alongside their studies, as well as learning some key skills for future employment. Their top jobs include:

1) Brand Managers
2) Private tutors
3) Inventor
4) Web work
5) Sales
6) Manual labour
7) Mystery shopping

To find out more on the jobs above click here

At RateMyPlacement, we still have some Brand Manager positions available for Royal Holloway, Imperial, Queen’s Belfast and Edinburgh! Check out RateMyPlacement Brand Managers for more information. Deadlines close soon so make sure you don’t miss out!

You may wonder what each member of the team has been up to?! Well, Sam, Amy and Alana have been busy getting to grips with their job roles and are all making a fantastic contribution to the website. Elsewhere, Jo has been busy working on the Top 20 Guide, soon to be printed and ready for distribution on the Campus Tour 2010/2011. Ali, Chris and Oli have been working their usual magic, contacting companies to promote RateMyPlacement’s services, whilst Liz has been busy hiring the new Brand Managers and securing Cass Business School as the venue for The National Placement and Internship Awards 2011.

Finally, Cara left RateMyPlacement at the end of the week as she is going to have a little baby imminently! We are very sad to see her go but she has been a fantastic asset to the team and we wish her good luck

That is everything for now so make sure you check out the blog to keep up to date on the latest news at RateMyPlacement!