My federal agency basically killed its internship program in summer 2024 because HR was so behind on permanent hiring that they said they couldn't process internship packages. Then in 2025 we didn't have interns because we were in hiring freeze/DRP hell. We're not soliciting for 2026 either.

I don't know how other agency's are handling it, but I would guess there are far fewer federal internships than there used to be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious about internship opportunities overall. Parents of college students—can you share your experiences? I know the entry-level job market is tough, but are companies also cutting back on paid internships or return offers? It feels like the degree-to-job pipeline is broken right now, leaving many students with little choice but to pursue graduate school or switch tracks, often toward med schools.

My kid is a CS major at UMD. After freshman year was a research intern for a govt agency. After sophomore year, an small defense contractor. This coming summer, an intern with a large software/AI company.
Apply early (August) and often. Good luck.

This, but also don't give up if it doesn't work out in the Fall semester. Lots of internships, especially smaller companies, are posted in Jan-March

FWIW, my kids were just talking about internships this weekend. DS, new grad, said he applied to over 150 in Fall of his junior year. Got 4 interviews and landed an internship by winter break (now works there full-time, had no connections to the company except that they tended to hire a lot from his college). DD is a junior, has applied to over 70 to date, with 3 interviews so far (2 were no, 1 still in the running), has three more interviews coming up. I expect something will work out, and if not, the place she worked the last two summers would be happy to have her back (that one is career-related; she'd just like to diversify her experience). In her field (environmental science), there were a lot more job postings starting in December. For DS (comp sci) the hiring was much more in the Fall.

Prior to junior year, both kids had career-related summer jobs (for both, personal connections helped get those) + practical experience on campus.

Also, cast a wide net. DD has been looking at a lot of environmental consulting/natural resources type jobs and we'll often see that in addition to the expected internships, they'll have something that's more for a CS or Business student (marketing, communications, data analytics, databases, etc.)

the big consulting firms (think MBB and "big 4") are hiring about 1/4 of what they hired 2 years ago, and that trend is not likely to change any time soon.

Anonymous wrote:I’m curious about internship opportunities overall. Parents of college students—can you share your experiences? I know the entry-level job market is tough, but are companies also cutting back on paid internships or return offers? It feels like the degree-to-job pipeline is broken right now, leaving many students with little choice but to pursue graduate school or switch tracks, often toward med schools.

My kid is a CS major at UMD. After freshman year was a research intern for a govt agency. After sophomore year, an small defense contractor. This coming summer, an intern with a large software/AI company.
Apply early (August) and often. Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:My advice is to steer clear of liberal arts majors unless heading into law school or med school or PhD programs. You have to have pragmatic skills to be useful in today’s workforce. The jobs that aren’t going away anytime soon are the client facing roles - sales engineering, territory managers, med device sales, consulting, account management. But to land these roles you also need strong analytical skills, data analysis, etc. The back office support roles (comms, mrktg, finance, hr, purchasing, ops) are being heavily supported or advanced now due to ai enhancements. We still need some entry level roles but not nearly as many.

It’s exactly the opposite with AI^^

My kid is at an Ivy (non-Stem/non-business) and has had a successful internship (one last summer and Fall semester) and one lined up for the summer.

Well, kinda. IME connections matter even more now.

My advice is to steer clear of liberal arts majors unless heading into law school or med school or PhD programs. You have to have pragmatic skills to be useful in today’s workforce. The jobs that aren’t going away anytime soon are the client facing roles - sales engineering, territory managers, med device sales, consulting, account management. But to land these roles you also need strong analytical skills, data analysis, etc. The back office support roles (comms, mrktg, finance, hr, purchasing, ops) are being heavily supported or advanced now due to ai enhancements. We still need some entry level roles but not nearly as many.

Any advice for parents with kids in high school, especially those who might need to dip into retirement savings to pay for college? Would you steer kids away from certain majors or schools?

Yes. My kid is going abroad for one this summer. US market is tight. His profs arranged it for him. Everything but the flight covered.

My company scaled back the internship program a few years ago and it's remained at that smaller level. As part of that, they used to have interns across all business functions and now they are mainly in the core business, not support functions like legal, research, communications, finance, etc.

This news is concerning—
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/anthropic-goldman-sachs-ai-model-accounting.html

it suggests that AI-driven replacement of white-collar jobs may be accelerating. Goldman Sachs could be an early signal.

We haven’t cut back but it’s harder (but not impossible, just the offer rate is down) to get a full time offer in some departments with uncertainty.

Yes

Exec at a large privately held company here: we have not cut back on our (paid) internship program at all.

I’m curious about internship opportunities overall. Parents of college students—can you share your experiences? I know the entry-level job market is tough, but are companies also cutting back on paid internships or return offers? It feels like the degree-to-job pipeline is broken right now, leaving many students with little choice but to pursue graduate school or switch tracks, often toward med schools.