Perceptions of Accounting Undergraduates Towards Internship Experiences During the Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID19 pandemic has severely affected the normal functioning of various activities across the world, including learning and education process. This unusual experience goes without exception not only for the on-campus students, but also to the internship students, which led the internship experience to shift from a face-to-face on-job learning environment to home-based internship environment. This study is intended to gather insightful information pertaining to the students’ perceptions on the challenges they faced in the internship during the pandemic era involving the aspect of internship adaptations, SOP compliance, financial concerns, and satisfaction during the internship. This study employs a quantitative method via questionnaire survey, carried out in one of the Malaysian private universities which is wholly owned by the prominent utility government-linked company. Out of 110 sample students, only 52 respondents are willing to participate in this survey questionnaire. Based on the findings, the Chi-square test revealed that there are only three items of the constructs are independent between the relationship of the students’ attributes and each item of the constructs of the students’ perceptions towards the internship challenges in the era of pandemic. Overall, the findings failed to have positive associations between the students’ attributes and each construct of the students’ perceptions on the internship hiccups, except for the working mode and their views on the internship’ adaptation during the pandemic. Further findings and ways forward are deliberated therein.

Keywords: Internship, COVID-19 pandemic, virtual internship

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is widely known as a contagious disease has attacked the core of humans’ well-being and economic aspects in the recent years and has transmitted uncontrollably among the people around the globe (Verma & Gustafsson, 2020). The current statistics revealed by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 6 July 2022 reported a total of 556,309,899 cases, with the total of 6,364,392 death infected by COVID-19 pandemic (WHO, 2022). To save the lives of the people, many countries have decided to declare sudden or phased lockdowns with ‘social distancing and stay-at-home’ policies, which is stringently damaged numerous business sectors (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020, Leite et al., 2020). The report by the World Trade Organization (WTO) showed a world trade slump in 2019 and with the global pandemic crisis in 2020, it is expected that the global financial crisis becomes worst (WTO, 2020).

The COVID19 pandemic has badly affected the normal functioning of various activities across the world, including learning and education process. This unusual experience goes without exception not only for the on-campus students, but also to the internship students. The austerity of the pandemic has led the internship experience to shift from a mundane face-to-face on-job learning environment to home-based internship environment. Given the accounting programme is bounded by the Malaysia Institute of Accountant (MIA)’s requirements, the students faced huge number of challenges to meet the trio parties’ requirements; university, company and regulator (i.e. MIA) in order to fulfill the undergraduates’ condition prior to their graduation. The adoption of this new experiential learning environment has made the pandemic-stricken students find some difficulties to make adjustment with the engagement of internship through home-based/online setting (Agarwal & Kaushik, 2020; Baber, 2020).

Some students have perceived that home-based or online learning may not be effective and burdensome due to lack of motivation and less interest towards virtual learning (Lim, 2020), unless if the proper tools and effective ways of experiential learning are successfully delivered and monitored by the internship instructors (Peltier et al., 2007). Given the unusual experiential learning occur during the pandemic which urged the internship students to modify their working arrangement as according to the company’s policies, such experiences may be perceived as huge challenges for the students, especially when kind of experiential learning is far different as compared to the on-campus learning. Additionally, as the government put social distancing’s directives into mandatory practices as a way to mitigate the disease transmission rampantly, hence the students are bound to comply with such standard of practices (SOPs).

There are number of preceding literatures pertaining to the online learning experiences/challenges during the pandemic era, however the current literature in the breadth of experiential learning or internship has been given less attention and it is still under-searched especially in the Malaysian context. Thus, the current study attempts to fill the loopholes of the existing studies and to provide insightful understandings on the students’ perceptions towards their challenges faced in the internship experiences during COVID-19 pandemic including the students’ adaptation towards the working environment during the pandemic, SOPs compliance, financial concerns and their satisfaction in dealing with the internship-related parties.

Literature Review

Experiential learning is the integral pedagogical foundation upon which internships are built, as it involves the process by which a student develops his/her knowledge through direct experience with guided reflection and analysis (Kolb, 1984). Internships form a part of a student's education requirement which have been shown to significantly increase graduates’ employment rates (Silva et al., 2018). Internships are also beneficial for the undergraduates’ development of thinking skills, the reinforcement of technical competencies, and their promotion for lifelong learning (Coco, 2000; Eyler, 2009). However, the presence of the the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused the internship platform for students among the Malaysian higher institutional educations went out of norms. As far as the health matter is concerned, majority of educational institutions were required to swiftly reorganise the dynamics of their educational curriculum which demands internship students to execute their obligations from the traditional physical mode into online platforms via a work-from-home (WFH) mode (Wong et al., 2021).

Working via WFH mode warrants the students to have their communication and dealing with their employer/clients virtually. Previous research has shown that there are several pitfalls of virtual internships. For instance, difficulties would arise when an intern is unable to interact with the physical community or work with a supervisor face-to-face and is unfamiliar with the particular work environment or community (Youngblood, 2020). Besides, Sundar (2008) also advocated that virtual internships may not provide sufficient networking opportunities as interns rarely meet with their supervisors or colleagues. Since the students are hardly to expose with their working members and other stakeholders, thus students may encounter difficulty to develop personal rapport or management skills (Marte, 2009). This is supported by Levin and Kurtzberg (2020) found that students perceived that working in a WFH mode as a major obstacle due to inability to engage and perform effectively in the workplace and need personal supervision from their supervisors/superior. Nonetheless, presenting another side of the coin, virtual internship may provide benefits to the students including unique learning experiences, flexibility working mode, ability to be supervised and mentored by their superior virtually (Alipour et al., 2021), save their transportation cost (Wortham, 2013) and engage in their jobs with higher levels of responsibility and autonomy than during an in-person internship, without the need to commute or work to strict time constraints (Wong et al., 2021).

It is important to note that the students’ perceptions on their internship especially during pandemic may be varied by their personal attributes and arrangement. Since similar studies in the breadth of internship are limited, thus the prior literatures on the online learning experience are used to relate with the variation of students’ personal attributes and arrangement, which explicitly may have effect to their perceptions on the challenges they faced during the pandemic. Selvanathan et al. (2020), for example, claimed that the geographical and individual characteristics contribute significantly to differences in how students perceive their virtual learning experiences because such a remote learning environment benefits urban-dwelling students more than those who live in rural areas. Likewise, similar finding also has been advocated by Song et al. (2016) who found that students with different demographic backgrounds have may different preferences on the type of online course due to various possible predicaments occur especially involving with the virtual learning interaction. Given the above arguments above, the hypotheses are developed as follows:

H1(a): There is a positive relationship between gender and the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H1(b): There are significant differences between gender and all constructs of the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H2(a): There is a positive relationship between type of firm and the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H2(b): There are significant differences between type of firm and all constructs of the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H3(a): There is a relationship between working mode and the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H3(b): There are significant differences between working mode and all constructs of the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

H4(a): The relationship between living arrangement and the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic is independent;

H4(b): There are significant differences between living arrangement and all constructs of the students’ perceptions on the challenges in the internship during the pandemic;

Methodology

This study employs a quantitative research design in nature, in which the primary data collection is performed via the questionnaire survey. The questionnaire items that related to the challenges face by students during virtual internship engagement were adopted from preceding literature, which is from Aristovnik et al. (2020). The structured questionnaire consisted of two sections; the first section comprises of the socio-demographic data of respondents; meanwhile section 2 pertains the challenges faced by respondents in virtual internship engagement during the pandemic, which was divided into four constructs, namely students’ adaptation towards the working environment during the pandemic, SOPs compliance, financial concerns and students’ satisfaction in dealing with the internship-related parties. This study is carried out in one of the Malaysian private universities which is wholly owned by the prominent utility government-linked company.

The population of the study is approximately 110 final year accounting students that undergo internship in various companies in Malaysia. Concerning the determination of sample size, according to Krejcie and Morgan (1970)’s sample size determination table in Piaw (2020), the estimated sample size of the population is 86. Based on the sample size, the self-administered 5-likert scale questionnaire has been disseminated virtually to the final year accounting undergraduates for the distribution of the survey. Considering the cross-sectional data, the survey has been performed virtually during the seventh week of internship, which is on end September 2021. Of 86 only 52 respondents were willing to respond and complete the survey, which constituted 61.6% of the sample size. Descriptive statistics was carried on the demographic profiles of the respondents and for each construct of students’ perceptions on the challenges faced in the internship during pandemic. The Pearson Chi Square test was then conducted to discover the relationship between students’ attributes and their perceptions on challenges of internship during the pandemic and if there are any differences exists in their level of perceptions on the challenges of internship and the students’ attributes. To further explain the relationship between the students’ attributes and each construct of the internship students’ perceptions towards their challenges faced during pandemic, the Spearman correlation test was conducted.

Discussions of Findings

Conclusions and Ways Forward

The catastrophe of the contagious Covid-19 disease has given huge impacts to the human lives and living, nationally and globally. This goes without exception to the group of final year undergraduates who undergo for their experiential learning before completing their study. In the moment of pandemic, the usual physical approach of daily arrangements is no longer appropriate for the people as the United Nation (UN) and the country’s government have taken various initiatives to alleviate the high transmissibility of the disease among the citizens and to save many lives. Students, who are characterised as a ‘fragile’ person expose themselves with the pre-working world may find that the internship constitutes as a challenging experiential learning environment relative to the traditional mode of learning environment. Thus, this study is intended to gather insightful information pertaining to the students’ perceptions on the challenges they faced in the internship during the pandemic era involving the aspect of internship adaptations, SOP compliance, financial concerns, and satisfaction during the internship. The students’ characteristics may contribute to the variation of the perceptions towards the challenges in the internship. Based on the findings, the Chi-square test revealed that there are only three items of the constructs are independent between the relationship of the students’ attributes and each item of the constructs of the students’ perceptions towards the internship challenges in the era of pandemic. Given the majority of the students are dominated by the female students, working placement in audit firm, working mode of WFH and staying with family in the living arrangement, thus there are no surprises if the constructs of the dependent variables are varied by these dominations of the students’ attributes towards their agreements in the internship challenges. However, there is a handful of other attributes which may explain to the variation in the students’ perceptions towards the internship challenges during the pandemic. Overall, the findings failed to have positive associations between the students’ attributes and each construct of the students’ perceptions on the internship hiccups, except for the working mode and their views on the internship’ adaptation during the pandemic.

Given the study is carried out in a single private higher educational institution and small number of the sample of respondents, thus it may not generalise to the whole population. Perhaps, the similar study could be undertaken by taking a larger sample of respondents by taking into account the accounting interns from both public and private universities in the future and evaluate using students’ other personal and geographical attributes that could explain the relationship and variation in the students’ perceptions towards their challenges that they faced during the pandemic. With these future studies to be expected come about, thus the loopholes of the internship-related studies could be filled and could address other internship issues that may be encountered during the era of pandemic, especially in the context of accounting field.

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our gratitude to the Institute of Research Management Center (iRMC) at Universiti Tenaga Nasional for providing the funding necessary to carry out the study for POCKET Grant No. J510050002/P202205.

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