Join an Internship Course or not? Evaluation from the Perspective of College Students in Taiwan

Even as Taiwan’s higher education is growing, graduation from college or university is not a guarantee for employment. Therefore, more and more schools are establishing relationships with enterprises to offer internship opportunities to students. These days senior college students are asked (as a matter of course) whether they are going to choose an internship course or not. What is the key determinant? Do the incentives provided by the enterprise and school work? The aim of the paper is to propose a Multiple-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM) evaluation model on the internship decision from the college students’ view in Taiwan. According to the result, the weight ranking is: (1) Enterprise factors; (2) Financial factors; (3) School factors and (4) Nonfinancial factors. Among the 20 criteria, the top three as ranked by the respondents are “the enterprises provide salary”; “approving the internship report equal to special topic report” and “the provided internship work that fits me”. The results indicate that the incentives provided by the enterprise and school do matter. Such an MCDM model serves as a decision-making mechanism for the schools, students and enterprises. Key-Words: internship, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), college students, Multiple-Criteria-Decision-Making (MCDM)