Are internships still relevant?

What is an intern supposed to do? Almost all college graduates have worked as interns at one point or another. Many still remember learning things from scratch, some of which were not related to their academic majors, such as sorting through documents or delivering the mail.

Nowadays, when college students in China, especially those pursuing “hot” majors such as finance and business, look for internships or part-time jobs, their wish list contains mostly multinational companies or top government agencies. It is as if they see internship as a test run for landing a dream job. They consider part-time jobs involving manual tasks as demeaning and a waste of time.

So what happened to learning basic skills, such as teamwork, and gaining “social experience”? Are today’s young people particularly ambitious, or has school already furnished them with all the basic skills they need to move onto more advanced tasks?

Many employers seem to disagree. They complain that a lot of the top graduates are ambition-rich and skill-poor. Even if they have gained in-depth knowledge and advanced skills in particular areas, many young people are socially inept, which could in turn hamper their career growth in the future.

Do today’s young people still need to look for “basic” internships in small businesses or even take on more manual jobs before they can go out to conquer the world?