Summer Scholarships

Summer scholarships are a great opportunity to explore a interesting topic in depth in an academically rigorous way. You will work under the supervision of academic and your work may result in extending human knowledge and publications.

With regard to work experience, summer research will typically count towards your non-professional work, but it will not typically count towards your professional work experience.

Why summer scholarships are not Professional Work

From research conducted by us and the NZ Government, we know that businesses want graduates that are "work ready" which they define as being able to work collaboratively in the workplace to solve interesting problems. Providing this experience is the goal of work experience. Particularly given universities find it extremely difficult to replicate a work environment that includes highly experienced industry peers.

With that in mind, there are a range of reasons why summer scholarships will not typically suit professional work experience.

  • The work is typically a solo effort, rarher than collaborative with team mates
  • The supervision is typically light to extremely light from academics, rather than normalised
  • You are surrounded by fellow students, rather than people experienced in your field
  • You create your own work processes, raher than experience work processes developed by experienced peers
  • Very limited opportunity to meet experienced people in your feild (poor networking opportunities), rather than working with experienced people in your feild every day
  • You already know the academic environment, versus experiencing a guenuine work environment
  • Auditors may question the motivation of the university in accepting work completed for them, there is not enough distance

Ultimately the work is being conducted for the university, rather than in industry. It makes a huge difference to the experience and how prepared you are as a graduate to enter your first industry role working alongside experienced peers, following their processes and collaboratively solving interesting problems.

Summer Scholarships in industry

If your summer scholarship involves you being embedded in industry (read "Professional work, what is it"), it may count as professional work. The important element here is the work environment, not the employment structure or label of Summer Researchers.

Academics

Please phrase offers of summer research carefully to avoid confusion and ensure that your students know their status with regards work experience. I suggest including the phrase below in your correspondence.

"Summer research may be used as general work experience, but is not typically considered as appropriate for Professional Work experience; unless your are embedded into an industry team. Refer to the work experience wiki and contact the work experience coordinator with the job description provided if you have further questions on work experience for your degree."

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