How College Students Experience Work: Implications for Policy and Practice Development

The purpose of this study is to determine the status of work experience programs of college students and to suggest a measure for the future improvement of the work experience. A survey was conducted to the currently enrolled students of college and universities and those who graduated in February 2015, and 1,459 respondents were collected and analyzed. These college students who had work experiences showed significant differences in satisfaction according to the absence or presence of salaries and written employment contracts, and they also displayed differences in terms of the types of jobs they performed depending on the participation period. Also they called for improvement of salaries, discriminative treatment and safety of work experience programs. In order to improve future work experience programs, it is necessary to establish institutional protection measures by reflecting those demands.