A total of 267 students participated in academic internships during the 2015-2016 academic year, 27 of whom were graduate students. This was an 8% increase in the total number from the previous academic year.
Our undergraduate internship opportunities were most prevalent for Public Relations and Advertising majors at 57%, followed by Communication Studies majors at 22%, and Journalism majors at 11%. These figures are from a pool of 240 undergraduate students.
Graduate students also found opportunity to work in professional internships in their fields of study, lead by Journalism internships at 41%, our new Communication and Media program† at 37% and our burgeoning Health Communication program at 11%. These figures are from a pool of 27 graduate students.
Our students overwhelmingly found internships with for-profit businesses at 78%, with 22% of students interning for nonprofits.
Offerings of paid internships have increased 6% compared to the 2014-2015 academic year, with 35% of our students in paid roles versus unpaid 65%. Paid undergraduate internships averaged a rate of $11.76 per hour, while graduate internships average a rate of $13.22 per hour.