Beneath the headlines of white collar lay-offs as companies explore the potential of generative AI to do entry-level office work, another change to the workforce is happening that may be of more immediate concern to current students and higher education institutions. The college internship, often lauded as the sine qua non of college activities that lead to a good job, is changing along with the rest of the American employment landscape. Students and administrators alike should prepare for what is happening now and begin thinking about what may happen over the next several years.

The world of college internships is changing, sometimes in contradictory ways. A recent survey suggests that 70 percent of hiring managers “believe that AI can do an intern’s job,” suggesting a contraction of the availability of internships. However, respondents in that same survey indicated that 84 percent of respondents are now offering more internships than they were before the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. A separate survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), found that over 70 percent of organizations plan to maintain or increase their intern hiring, although overall intern hiring is predicted to decrease by just over 3 percent. Despite these survey results, data from the popular career and internship site Handshake, shows overall reductions in internship postings around 10 percent over each of the past three academic years, although those changes vary by industry.

Generative AI’s impact on the internship market comes from the uncanny alignment between AI’s strengths, including summarizing, data entry, and other basic knowledge work, and the kind of work that many internships involve. Similar to the impact on early career full-time roles, as automatable administrative work is done by AI, the fewer remaining opportunities emphasize judgment, collaboration, and relationship building. The growing distinction between entry-level and low-level work for white collar jobs applies to internships as well, with low-level tasks being delegated to AI.

With generative AI technology advancing and changing every few months, it can be difficult to predict the impact on specific sectors of society. Despite the difficulties, looking ahead at the near future possibilities can help students and the administrators working to support them understand how the landscape of internships is changing. Given the compartmentalization of entry-level and low-level skills, there will likely be fewer internship opportunities and those that remain will be more structured around human interaction and domain-specific knowledge while the much maligned “coffee and copies” roles disappear completely. Employers will continue to look for interns for support in areas that AI cannot easily automate, like interacting with human clients, lab work, compliance-sensitive tasks, etc.

Skill in using AI for business specific purposes will likely become one of the distinguishing features of successful intern applicants as businesses increasingly expect employees to use it in some form or fashion. Students seeking internships, and career advisors helping them, should prepare to describe their AI fluency and provide examples of its use in resumes and cover letters. The likely smaller number of positions overall will mean an increase in competitiveness, with potentially negative implications for students traditionally shut out of internship opportunities, something for which institutions should remain on guard.

AI will continue to encroach on the world of work, likely (hopefully?) in ways that augment expertise and rebalance the portfolio of skills needed for success rather than to simply eliminate internships and early career positions altogether. Students and administrators will need to adapt quickly in order to realize the potential benefits of higher quality internship opportunities and grow existing pathways from college to career.