Internships lift employability confidence, but social class still shapes who feels ready
Updated Jun 30, 2026
Graduate outcomes arrive after the cohort has left. The earlier warning often appears in student feedback, when placements feel out of reach, networks feel closed, or careers support lands too late. Sarah Vines and Matthias S. Gobel's Studies in Higher Education paper, "Levelling the playing field? How social class and internships influence perceived employability amongst UK university students", matters because it brings that issue forward into the student experience itself. It also sharpens what we have already seen in work on why students disengage from employability support: readiness for work is shaped by opportunity design as much as by student motivation.
Context and research question
Universities are under constant pressure to show that students leave with the confidence, networks, and practical experience needed for work. Internships and placements are often presented as an obvious answer. The harder question is whether all students can benefit from those opportunities equally, or whether some arrive with advantages that make employability support easier to convert into confidence and perceived readiness.
Vines and Gobel approach that problem through a survey of university students in the UK, drawing on Bourdieu's framework of capital. Their research question is practical and timely for Student Experience, Careers, and Market Insights teams: how do students' social class backgrounds, and their participation in internships or work placements, shape perceived employability while they are still at university? That matters because perceived employability is not only a careers-service issue. It is also a student voice issue about confidence, access, and whether opportunity feels real or merely advertised.
Key findings
Students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds reported stronger perceived employability. The paper links that difference to unequal access to social capital, not only to differences in academic effort or ambition. In other words, students who already have stronger professional networks, insider knowledge, or easier access to opportunity are more likely to feel work-ready.
The abstract states the pattern directly:
"students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds exhibited greater perceived employability"
Internships and work placements were positively associated with perceived employability across social class backgrounds. That is an important result for UK institutions because it supports the case for structured work-based learning. Placements are not only a CV-building extra. They appear to strengthen students' sense that they can navigate work and present themselves credibly in professional settings.
The paper also implies that placements help, but do not automatically remove structural inequality. If students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds begin with stronger social capital, then the value of an internship depends partly on whether universities make access, preparation, and follow-up genuinely equitable. That sits closely beside earlier evidence that low-SES students can experience placements as culturally unfamiliar, even when the institution treats the opportunity as universally beneficial.
The broader significance is that employability should be treated as a live institutional signal, not only as an outcome measured after graduation. A survey-based view of perceived employability gives universities a chance to notice weaker confidence, uneven access, or thin professional networks before those issues surface in destination data. For UK teams, that is the practical opportunity in the paper.
Practical implications
First, universities should measure employability while students are still enrolled, not only after they leave. A short block of survey questions on confidence, readiness, professional networks, and access to relevant experience can provide a much earlier read of where support is landing unevenly. A validated employability scale for student surveys is especially useful here because it gives teams a more defensible starting point than a few improvised careers questions. The benefit is earlier intervention while the cohort can still benefit.
Second, institutions should treat placements and internships as equity mechanisms, not just enrichment activity. That means tracking who applies, who secures opportunities, who declines them, and what barriers students describe in open comments. Travel costs, unpaid work, timetable clashes, weak signposting, and lack of confidence can all depress uptake without appearing in a headline employability score. The benefit is a clearer view of whether opportunity is really widening access or quietly reproducing advantage.
Third, universities should join careers evidence to wider student voice evidence. Placement feedback, finalist surveys, PTES comments, local pulse work, and service evaluations often sit in separate folders and separate teams. A model such as UCL's final-year Annual Programme Survey beyond NSS shows how institutions can add targeted placement and programme questions while students are still on course. Student Voice Analytics fits naturally here because it can group comments about support quality, placement access, professional confidence, and networking by cohort or subject, giving careers and quality teams a clearer basis for action. The benefit is less guesswork and stronger cross-team coordination.
FAQ
Q: How should a university turn this paper into a better employability survey or placement feedback process?
A: Start small and early. Add a short employability block to an existing internal survey, then pair it with one open-text question such as "What has most helped or hindered your readiness for work so far?" Run it before and after key placement or internship stages if possible. If you are comparing comment sets across courses or cohorts, a clear NSS open-text analysis methodology helps keep that evidence readable and consistent.
Q: What are the methodological limits of this study?
A: The paper focuses on perceived employability, not on eventual graduate destination or salary. That makes it useful as a leading indicator rather than as proof of labour-market outcomes. Institutions should therefore read it alongside placement participation data, uptake of careers support, and qualitative student comments, especially if they want to judge whether a specific intervention is changing outcomes as well as perceptions.
Q: What does this change about student voice more broadly?
A: It strengthens the case for treating employability as part of the student experience rather than as a separate post-study dashboard. When students describe careers support as generic, placements as inaccessible, or networking as something meant for other people, they are not offering peripheral comments. They are pointing to the mechanisms through which inequality can persist inside higher education.
References
[Paper Source]: Sarah Vines, Matthias S. Gobel "Levelling the playing field? How social class and internships influence perceived employability amongst UK university students" DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2025.2601096
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