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For college students in search of internships - the paying kind - things are looking up.
Employers are beginning to loosen their purse strings as they reckon with talent search strategies in an improving economy.
"There's definitely been an uptick" in openings for internships as a whole, and more employers, including non-profits, are willing to pay for them, said Amanda Dumond-Avila, director of talent initiatives and business enhancement at the East Lansing-based Prima Civitas Foundation. The foundation includes among its programs a Michigan Internship Initiative to help businesses and non-profits recruit interns and build structures to use them effectively.
Shelley Lowe, executive director of career services at Grand Rapids-based Davenport University, said the number of students at the school's Warren and Livonia campuses who found internships rose 58 percent last year. For the entire university, which has campuses throughout the state, the number rose 42 percent. Of those, 71 percent were paid internships.
The school has three specialty areas of study: business, technology and health care. Areas of keen interest among employers are data analytics and information technology for health care. For someone who can do data analytics for health care, the future is especially bright, Lowe said. But the demand is across the board.
"Anybody who can mine data is going to have a job," Lowe said.
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