2020 Volume 8 Issue 2 Pages 45-53
Since 2015, Osaka University has had a practical internship called the Coupling Internship (CIS), which is supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. CIS is conducted with mixed participants from Osaka University and overseas universities from both humanities and engineering majors. During the 2-week-long group internship at a Japanese manufacturing firm, students with diverse backgrounds work together to propose findings and solutions to the firm’s problems. 164 students of Osaka University have completed the CIS so far. This paper attempts to find the effects of the CIS experience on participants’career considerations, based on the responses to a follow-up survey of CIS participants who graduated from Osaka University. The results show that both Humanities and Engineering students enjoyed positive effects but that the type of effect tend to differ between the two: the biggest impact on Engineering students was an expansion of the career paths they considered to include international options while, for the Humanities students, it was self-understanding.
