Internship Practices in Architectural Education: Student Perspectives

Abstract

The experience that students gain from internship programs is considered to be one of the most critical complements to higher education. Using data gathered through surveys with over 100 students from architectural education institutions in Turkey and focus group discussions with interns, key positive aspects, challenges, and shortcomings of architectural internships were identified. Results revealed that while students feel that both hard and soft skills needed in the workplace could-to some extent-be improved through internship programs, poor learning opportunities provided by employers, inability of architectural education to keep up with the rapidly evolving technology, and the misuse of interns remain as key problem areas. Therefore, the results imply a need for greater collaboration between university and industry and more empirical research into the effectiveness of different internship program structures.