Abstract:

Santander CRUE-CEPYME scholarships, is a new programme intended for those undergraduate students in order to develop their placements in SMEs. The main feature of this programme is that the placements are granted by Bank Santander and that every college or university in Spain, has the opportunity of offering them to their students. The main aim of this article is to describe the characteristics of such programme in Universitat Jaume I (UJI) and to evaluate how it affects the employability of its participants, together with the strategic advantages that it offers to the subsidizer organisation, to the SMEs and to UJI.

In this sense, UJI, has extensive experience in the management of work placement programmes, having managed successfully the work placements of its students since 1992 (having approximately 3600 students taking work placements each year). Our model is characterized by a defined paperwork of the work placements, so, the Careers Service is the interlocutor between the co-operative entities and the other agents implied (students, teachers who act as tutors and academic work placement coordinators).

Two calls of Santader-CRUE-CEPYME scholarships have been processed in order to complete the work placements (2011-12 and 2012-13). In the last two years, more than 10.000 students have been benefited from this scholarship in Spain, 102 students from Universitat Jaume I. The average duration of their work placements has been 3 months (264 hours). Moreover, 62 SMEs from our socio-economic environment have participated in this programme too.

The internships of this programme are part of the syllabus of every discipline studied in UJI, so the students have academic recognition in their transcript of records.

The main fact of this programme is that it is organized as a public call. So, students are selected by their own achievements: their academic records and the number of ECTs achieved. Furthermore, students with disabilities will be viewed favorably.

A great attempt has been made in order to offer a great number of possibilities to the candidates; offering for free workshops with the purpose of teaching the students how to create their own CVs, cover letters and interviews, to increase their possibilities to be hired. In order to guarantee the quality of the work placements, each student must have the supervision of a professional in the same company and of a teacher/tutor in the university. Moreover, to make sure that the placement offers reach and standard, they are checked by the experts of the Careers Service.

There is a Quality Assurance System followed during and after the placement. The results have been very positive; both sides are very satisfied with the scholarships, with the paperwork of the Careers Service and with the training and attitude of the students, being said by the supervisors that students have an excellent attitude and training. Further improvement possibilities and changes for future calls are described in the article.

Keywords:

Work Based Learning, Integrated Curriculum, Labour Market, Employability, SMEs.