Students’ Experience Within A Work-Integrated Learning Program in the Context of Kazakhstan

Abstract

The employment of graduates plays a major role in a society’s sustainability and a country’s economy. It is important for higher education institutions to ensure that study programs enable graduates to become employable at the labor market. However, the recent national media articles report that it is quite challenging for Kazakhstani graduates to secure an employment due to their lack of professional attributes. The value of a degree remains important, but it is not found to be the only thing that guarantees a student’s possession of transferable skills. When recruited, graduates are increasingly expected to deal with matters extraneous to their major. Past studies have highlighted that internships positively affect graduates’ employability. While international studies imply that a successful host of placements depends on different factors, such as organization, supervision, and students’ drive, little information exists about Kazakhstani work-integrated learning (WIL) programs. The purpose of this study is to explore the contribution of internship programs to employability through graduates’ reflections and identify key considerations that could facilitate the improvement of the work-integrated learning programs. The current research is a case study where recent graduates of one private university participated in a semi-structured interview and elaborated on their work placement experience under the newly implemented WIL model. The study is significant for educational stakeholders, as it provides insights into the methods that could facilitate a student’s incrementally productive transition from university to market. The implications of the study showcase how different success factors of the effective host of the new model happened to operate in congruence with one another. Thus, it left graduates with positive impressions as it helped them attain beneficial learning outcomes and enabled almost every respondent to secure employment by the end of the work-based project. The issues regarding the WIL are mainly of respondents’ personal struggles such as lack of skills and confidence. Some organizational parts of the internship program in the documentation and adminstration processes also have to be considered by the program coordinators in the update of the following strategies of the model.