An internship as an elective during the Master’s phase

All Master’s students have the option of choosing the elective ‘Master Internship’, which is a means of doing a internship. The aim of this elective is to acquire high-quality practical experience of the field. This means that the student can work in your organization without any strict theoretical requirements. The internship must, however, have clear links with the student’s degree programme.

Research internship for a final-year thesis

A student doing a research internship combines an internship with writing a thesis. The student conducts research into a particular phenomenon, using your company and the available data as an example. The results generated by the research may provide information that benefits your business operations. The focus in this type of internship is on conducting research and writing a thesis. It may be possible to combine this with ‘working’ for your company, but this is something you should discuss with the student in question.

The thesis that the student writes during the research internship will be published in the University of Groningen’s public database. This is compulsory in view of knowledge sharing. If the thesis contains confidential information about your company, the student can remove this part of the information at your request. An amended version will then be published in the database.

Voluntary internship

Many of our students are keen to do a internship during the Bachelor’s phase of their degree programme as a means of gaining practical experience during their studies. The University of Groningen is not formally invested in these internships and you are free to agree the nature of the tasks with the student. Contrary to what is often assumed, it is completely legal to appoint a internship student without involving the university. It is important to satisfy certain conditions to make it clear that the internship is purely for work experience and does not constitute disguised employment.