The Impact of Internship Experience during Secondary Education on Schooling and Labour Market Outcomes

Abstract

The literature on workplace learning in secondary education has mainly focussed on vocational education programmes. In this study, we examine the impact of internship experience in secondary education on a student's schooling and early labour market outcomes, by analysing unique, longitudinal data from Belgium. To control for unobserved heterogeneity, we model sequential outcomes by means of a dynamic discrete choice model. In line with the literature on vocational education programmes, we find that internship experience has a positive effect on labour market outcomes that diminishes over time, although within the time window of our study, we find no evidence for a null or negative effect over time.

Keywords: internship, transitions in youth, education, labour

JEL Classification: I21, I26, J21, J24