Students in Local Universities Offered Structured Internships which Transitioned into Full-time Employment

24 Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Education (a) how many students in local universities have been offered structured internships in 2024 which transition into full-time employment; (b) what proportion of these offers come from the private versus public sector; and (c) whether the Ministry is working with the industry to expand pathways into first jobs from internships.

Mr Desmond Lee: The primary objective of internships is to provide students with on-the-job training that allows them to apply their learning in a real-world setting, and develop soft skills in the workplace, such as communicating and working with colleagues. Some companies may choose to offer an intern a full-time role at the end of the internship, if there are available full-time positions and they find the intern to be a good fit after having had the opportunity to assess the intern's performance up-close.

Based on the 2024 Joint Autonomous University Graduate Employment Survey (JAUGES), about 40% of graduates had received job offers from a company they had done an internship with, of which about 60% took up the offer. The Ministry of Education does not collect data on the internship companies that provided job offers to interns.