78 WORK FORCE / Confidence Motivates Interns
There have been no studies asking why students pursue internships, whether or not they valued their experience or what the financial impact has been. To begin to answer these questions, I conducted two surveys, one in the sum- mer of 2009 and one in the spring of 2010. The goal of the surveys was to get preliminary data to answer these ques- tions, so that students could be better informed as they make career decisions for their first year out of school.
Job choices The first survey was a short question-
naire sent electronically to the University of Pennsylvania’s graduating class of 2010. This survey collected data on what
graduates planned for work for their first year after graduation. There was an overwhelming response
rate of 95.6% of the 114 graduates. Fifty- six percent were enrolled in an internship program, 40.3% planned on working in a non-internship setting and 3.7% were pursuing further graduate-level educa- tion programs.
The majority (79.8%) of the new
graduates described their following year’s work as small-animal exclusive.
Large-animal exclusive was next (11.0%), with mixed-animal (6.4%) trailing. Of the 86 small-animal-exclusive
respondents, 37 indicated they were not participating in an internship. Twenty of the 37 who were not participating in an internship did not have employment determined for the following year by the time they graduated. That is, of graduates interested in
practicing small-animal-exclusive med- icine and not pursuing internships, 54.1% did not have a job lined up by the time they graduated from veteri- nary college.
It is possible that a certain number of
new graduates chose to take some time off or were waiting to make decisions about employment. With such a large percentage of unemployed graduates, however, it is reasonable to assume that a number of them wanted a job but were not able to procure one. Unfortunately, there is no prior year’s data to compare in order to deduce trends. The AVMA’s release of the 2010 num-
bers of job offers per graduate seeking employment may shed more light on the saturation of the job market for new graduates. If the decrease in job offers for new graduates has continued to trend
First-year employment choices for 2010 graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine
Percentage of graduates
No internship
Private practice internship
Academic internship
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
43.0% 100% 58.3%
53.5% 3.5%
Small-animal exclusive Mixed 41.7% Large-animal exclusive
Trends magazine, November/December 2010
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