(www.naceweb.org) Internship hiring will be cut by nearly 21 percent this year and co-op hiring by 11 percent, according to employers responding to NACE's 2009 Experiential Education Survey. The last time hiring for both was down was in 2004 (see Figure 1).

Even with the anticipated drop in hiring, employers remain committed to their experiential education programs. This year, 92.6 percent of survey respondents plan to hire students for internship and/or co-op positions, a slight drop from the 94.9 percent who had similar hiring plans during the 2007-08 academic year.

Salaries

Even though intern/co-op hiring is projected to decrease, the pay they receive should be higher than it was last year. Employers plan to increase undergraduate-level intern salaries by 4.9 percent, offering an average hourly wage of $17.13, compared to the average of $16.33 they offered to 2007-2008 interns. Cutbacks appear to be more prevalent at the master's level with employers reporting a 7.1 percent decrease in this year's average salary ($23.18) compared with last year's ($24.95).

Likewise, undergraduate co-op salaries are on the rise and master level co-op salaries are on the decline. At the undergraduate level, the average hourly co-op salary reported was $17.69, a 7.9 percent increase over last year's average of $16.39. The decrease at the master's level wasn't as sharp as it was with interns with the current average of $23.85 per hour representing a decrease of 2.9 percent over last year.

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