Internships are increasingly regarded as a high-impact educational activity that benefits students' personal, academic, and professional growth (Kuh, 2008). Every year thousands of U.S. college students participate in an internship, with some selecting the unique opportunity to intern abroad. In 2018/19, approximately 25,000 U.S. students worked abroad or completed an international internship for credit, increasing by 33 percent from 18,715 students during the 2008/09 academic year (Open Doors, 2010, 2020). The popularity of international internship opportunities has grown over the past decade as U.S. universities have established partnerships with international companies (Stacey, 2020). U.S. students have more options for pursuing internships abroad. Government scholarship programs such as the Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program and the Department of Defense’s The Language Flagship program also offer scholarships to students for participating in an internship overseas. In addition, global internship program providers such as Global Experiences, part of AIFS, Inc., and CCRC Asia have more recently provided additional pathways for remote global internship study through GE Virtuoso and Virtual Internships.

Due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many students saw their spring and summer global internship programs canceled, postponed, or transitioned to an online environment. The pivot by U.S. universities, global organizations, and internship program providers from offering an in-person experience, whether domestic or international, to a remote internship, occurred rapidly (Hora, 2020; Maurer, 2020). Global Experiences (C.Orrison personal communication, March 4, 2021) and CCRC Asia (J. Low personal communication, February 26, 2021) reported approximately 50 percent of students who planned to participate in a summer international internship transitioned to a remote global internship by early June. A once rare practice, remote internship opportunities for students, including remote international internships, emerged as a logical trend for companies by fall 2020, continuing into 2021 (Laker, 2021; Union College, 2020).

Given the solid integration of internships into the undergraduate student experience, there are reasons to believe that remote global internships may continue as a common opportunity for students in the future. Nearly 70 percent of graduating seniors from the Class of 2019 completed an internship experience (National Association of Colleges and Employers [NACE], 2020). For students, remote global internships can provide the added advantages of a safe work-based learning experience, eliminating travel and housing costs, and flexibility to manage dedicated work and school hours while still demonstrating a student’s interest in developing a global perspective. For employers, providing students with an internship experience has been an essential recruitment pipeline in their quest for new talent (Laker, 2021). A global reach allows companies to identify multi-lingual and new creative talent to fill skill shortages within their organizations (Jeske & Axtell, 2016). Remote global internships also benefit employers who do not need to identify a desk or office space for interns. However, further research is needed to understand whether remote global internships yield the same learning and career readiness outcomes as in-person internships, including the implications for skills acquisition and global citizenship.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the role of remote global internships in providing experiential educational opportunities for university students and the potential role these internships have in developing students' skills acquisition, global citizenship, and career readiness. The first section provides an overview of the definitions used to describe in-person and remote global internship experiences including relative benefits and challenges. It then outlines the three analytical frames of remote global internships: skills acquisition, global citizenship, and career readiness. Through an analysis of recent findings from global internship program providers as well as others, we describe promising practices for supporting remote global internships applicable to all members of the international education community – universities, employers, and third-party providers alike. This paper aims to contribute to the conversation on the possible role of remote global internships to widen the space of availability for students to gain international work experiences while remaining in their home country and the relative benefits of these experiences both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.