Abstract:

The acquisition of skills has become one key issue in the Spanish higher education institutions, especially after the establishment of the European Higher Education Area. Within this new perspective student placements should increase their importance in the curriculum design and more resources should be devoted to foster the cooperation between University and industry. In most cases an internship represents the first contact of the students with the working world. Furthermore, one of the main tasks of the University is to create well-qualified young people as future professionals, with the necessary personal and professional skills to work in the global economy. And an internship can be a great aid for students to acquire some skills which are more difficult to acquire if they just stay in the University campus all of the time. The aim of this paper is to present some thoughts about the skills that can be acquired by students during the time of their placement and to show the experience of the Facultad de Administración y Dirección de Empresas de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain. We will analyze the evolution of the number of students taking advantage of placements and make a brief description of the companies that collaborate with the Faculty, to analyze the level of acceptance and satisfaction of the agents involved. The main conclusion is that is it worth to undertake all the necessary actions and efforts to increase the number of internships, with high satisfaction levels for both students and enterprises.

Keywords:

Student placement, acquisition of skills.