The impact of a year in industry on academic outcomes in higher education (engineering)

Abstract

Year-in-industry schemes provide new or enhanced skills beyond the academic environment, a context for consolidation for the academic skills and a maturity in the approach to subsequent studies. The present work aims to quantify the impact of the year in industry placement scheme on academic outcomes for engineering students according to whether or not they undertake a year in industry. The results show that the gain in grades is notable: +5.7% for students returning from placement to year 3 of a Bachelor. ANOVA tests show that the increase observed is not the result of expected variation. A detailed analysis reviews where in the curriculum, the benefits may be expressed. The analysis shows that the perception that students benefit from skills gained on the year in industry for their third-year project is mainly correct, but confounds causality and correlation. Finally, it is shown that students in lower grade categories prior to the placement benefit most from the year in industry. The year in industry in engineering is demonstrably beneficial to students. Some work remains to be done to define which competences are improved, or whether the gains are individual or quantifiable at the collective level with generalised trends. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Internship Work placement Year in industry Work Based Learning academic outcome

Index Keywords

Engineering education High educations Students Work-Based Learning Internship Work placement Year in industry Academic environment Academic outcome ANOVA test Low grade Placement scheme

Author Affiliations

Faculty of Science and Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales, United Kingdom

Funding & Acknowledgements

Swansea University

The authors have no conflict of interest in the publication of the submitted works. The work was undertaken in line with the first author's academic duties and not supported by any external funding. The authors wishes to acknowledge the support of the employability and placement team in engineering, Swansea University, past and current, whose dedication to students' outcomes has contributed over many years to build the dataset analysed by the author.

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The impact of a year in industry on academic outcomes in higher education (engineering)

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