Internships provide a good way for economics majors to satisfy graduation requirements while gaining practical skills and making valuable contacts. While some companies or agencies are able to pay interns, some are not. Economics majors who work on internships that do not pay are eligible for special scholarship aid to help them meet their school expenses during the semester of their internship. A typical economics internship finds a student working in a local business, government agency, or non-profit organization gathering and analyzing information. For instance, economics majors have served on internships helping to design an economic development plan for a small town, helping to find international customers for a local business, designing an economic forecasting model for a local consulting firm, and helping to write an analysis of the Idaho tax structure.
Internships are more than just practical experience.
They are intended to provide learning fully comparable to that received in the classroom. Thus, an important part of each internship is the internship report in which the student reflects on the experience and carefully identifies the economics knowledge they have gained. They are simply an alternative way of learning economics. Once the student and a member of the economics faculty have tentatively arranged for an internship, the student must write a one to two page proposal that states clearly states exactly where the student will be working, what the student will be doing, and who will be the on-site supervisor, and exactly what economics knowledge the student expects to gain from the internship. University regulations require than an intern perform as least 50 hours of work for each academic credit awarded.