Students’ perception of internship programme in accounting

Abstract

Internship is an important part of a study program for accounting undergraduates in all universities in Sri Lanka. This research explores the students’ perception of their experience in Internship training before and after engaging the training. A questionnaire was given to 107 fourth-year accounting undergraduates in the University of Kelaniya, who had introduced internship training for its undergraduates. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results show that the accounting students had moderate levels of perception on all the categories, except future career, which showed a low level of perception. This meant that they believed that internship training had not given them the confidence that they will be able to obtain the future career they want in accounting profession. Another interesting finding of the research, through a correlation analysis shows that the longer the duration of internship training, the higher the readiness and future career development among the accounting undergraduates.