Li Weicheng (www. ifeng.com): Today there are two problems with internships. First, companies are reluctant to accept college students as interns. Second, college students show an indifferent attitude toward internships. From my perspective, the possible reasons are that enterprises lack confidence in students' professional ability and worry that interns' work will affect the normal work of the company. On the other hand, interns are not enthusiastic about the work because they may think the company is not the one that they would work for in the future.

But, in my opinion, both taking courses at school and doing internships are forms of studying, but only in different forms. For university students, knowledge learned from books need to be put into practice. For instance, being interns for years before becoming qualified doctors is a common situation for medical majors abroad. The situation is the same for teachers. Therefore, abolishing the internship system is not a reasonable suggestion.

Zhang Tianwei (Beijing Youth Daily): It's unwise to arbitrarily deny all internships. Recently, several broadcasting major students of the Communication University of China have attracted much attention from the public by anchoring news programs on the China Central Television news channel as interns. This might be a successful example of complementarity of school study and internships.

As for Huang's remarks on internships, I think they are not groundless. Huang is an economist and his remarks are mainly directed to students of economics major. The subject is a research-oriented one and requires a lot of academic work. For students of economics major, completing four years' academic work is the primary goal. Imposing internships or job-hunting on them during this period really adds to the burden on them.

So, college students can be classified into two groups. For colleges and majors that focus on preparing students for future jobs, internships are important, as students' work ability might be more valued by employers. Comparatively speaking, for colleges and majors that focus on academic research, students there seem to need more time on study and research than on internships.

We should acknowledge that in recent years, Chinese schools have put more and more emphasis on the proportion of students entering schools of a higher grade or getting employed after graduation. In my opinion, this kind of utilitarian thinking in the education system is the root of the problems in the internship system.

Thus, what the Chinese education system needs now is a gradual change of the utilitarianism-guided education concept. As for university administrators, they need to be clear about the orientation of the school or the major—whether it is research-oriented or job-oriented, and to provide a corresponding environment for their students. Meanwhile, schools need to respect their students' career goals and job choices, and to provide practical and useful help accordingly.

Yuan Yue (Sina Weibo): Internships and academic work are complementary to each other. Internships are irreplaceable, as college academic study cannot equip students with professional skills required by employers. Some students might be doing very well in school work, but when it comes to real work practice, they find themselves helpless. In this case, internships can help them develop practical skills. Nowadays the internship system is universally practiced. But in China, how to make internships more helpful and useful to students is something we need to work out.

Hong Chengwen (www.ifeng.com): Some developed countries improved their internship system by introducing changes regarding the settings of curriculum. For example, in Britain, the "work-based learning" policy combines off-campus internships with full-time degree courses, making it part of students' school life. The British Government subsidizes the companies that use interns, and students' internships usually last less than a year. Although internships are now popular around China, regulations to protect and help students are still missing.

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