Minor, Exchange, or Internship? – EU Consultancies Are a Good Deal

by Federico Durante, 8 minutes

Most universities in Europe give bachelor's and master’s students the possibility, either for a semester or an entire year, to choose how to acquire more experience and deeper knowledge about the topic they have been studying. Generally, this possibility comes under three forms: an exchange programme, an internship, or a minor programme. The exchange and minor programmes are classical ‘academic paths’, in which students pursue academic courses by attending lectures, studying at home, and doing exams. In a minor, students stay in their current city and choose courses that deepen their existing knowledge or expand it to new topics. While exchange allows students to choose a university abroad, among those with which its ‘home university’ has a partnership; by studying abroad the student will be in contact with a new social, cultural and, most importantly, academic environment. If the ‘host university’ is in another EU country, then the exchange is relatively easy and cheap because students can apply through the Erasmus+ programme, which provides substantial EU funds and alleviates the financial pressure. Blue&yellow has already provided detailed explanatory content about the Erasmus programme here. Alternatively, an internship gives students a professional opportunity to observe and engage with a working environment. At the end of their internship, students have to write a report about their experience. This option is typically considered the most ‘applied’ and a-theoretical since it entails the cultivation of practical skills and hands-on tasks, but it does not provide any new academic or theoretical knowledge.

Students may have a hard time deciding which path to choose, and could end up making some choices they will regret in the future. Often, they feel ambitious and would like to go for an internship, but then some refrain from doing so because they feel that they need more theoretical, academic knowledge before entering a working environment. Given that this choice is very subjective and there is no straightforward answer to such considerations, it is difficult and often misleading to address this topic. However, this is precisely the job that ECA is trying to tackle: by raising your awareness, supporting your career path towards European affairs, and allowing our members to make more informed choices whatever they might be. For this reason, blue&yellow has interviewed Ms. Ingeborg Tveter Lunde, whose experience will provide you with information relevant to your final decision. Ingeborg will help you understand the opportunity cost of staying in an academic context instead of opting for an internship.

Ingeborg is 23 years old, from Norway, and even though she is not a European citizen, she built her entire learning experience at university around the EU. In 2018 she pursued a bachelor's and then a master's in European studies at the Norwegian University for Science and Technology, in which she had the occasion to go on exchange at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, before becoming a teaching assistant in her home university. Since January 2022, she has been working as an intern at ADS Insight in Brussels, where she experienced EU affairs first-hand. ADS Insight is a consultancy operating in Brussels, Germany, Poland, France and Sweden that provides advisory services about regulatory affairs, mainly related to the energy transition, environment, maritime transport, circular economy healthcare, education and food. Both the names of Ingeborg and ADS Insight might not be new to you, since ECA hosted an event at the Law Faculty about EU consultancies on the 25th of April, where ADS was invited and Ingeborg presented it with two other colleagues. 

Wideness, not Depth

Blue&yellow asked Ingeborg why she chose to leave her post as a teaching assistant, in an academic context, to take an internship at ADS Insight in Brussels. Ingeborg answered by saying that, in theory, she felt she had a good understanding of how the EU works, but that she wanted to see what it was like in practice and realise how much she still didn’t know. In fact, she discovered a previously unknown dimension of the EU composed of the practical dynamics of a legislative process and the continuous intra-institutional back-and-forth of a legislative proposal. The workings of the EU become clearer, such as “how much happens in the making of policies, and in turn how this affects private businesses, [...] how one goes about lobbying in a practical sense.” Ingeborg also mentioned the usefulness of more pragmatic information she obtained by operating in Brussels, including “the accessibility of EU officials, Commissioners, MEPs, and about the strive for transparency in the EU.” She didn’t necessarily acquire new knowledge about the theoretical dimension of EU institutions, however, she considers the fact of utilising your existing theoretical knowledge as intellectually rewarding. Ingeborg already knew that the EU was extensive, given the wideness of policy areas that the EU covers, but she was able to discover that this extensiveness also goes in-depth by becoming very detailed and technical since the EU tries to regulate everything when it detects the necessity. Unsurprisingly, an internship is able to offer a larger amount of practical knowledge than a minor or exchange programme. In Ingeborg’s view, that kind of knowledge feels stupefying and startling once acquired, even with a conspicuous amount of prior theoretical, and academic preparation.

Think About the Future

 We asked Ingeborg whether it was possible to also obtain theoretical knowledge with an internship, in order to expand the scale of your comprehension and consciousness about trends both in EU and global affairs. Ingeborg reacted enthusiastically to this question by saying that since the beginning of her internship she had the occasion to be aware of totally new domains of human knowledge: “ADS Insight deals with many different policy areas, [...] and I have the chance to deal with all of them. This gave me the possibility to figure out my interests better, which makes it easier to choose future steps of my career”. She explained that she learned to recognise and understand principles of new disciplines such as public health, environment or energy, but not necessarily any new knowledge about the workings of the European Union. However, she saw the working of theoretical framework learnt in university in practice, such as forces of supranationalism and intergovernmentalism vesting the friction and negotiations between the Commission, Parliament, and Council.

Read the News

However, even though not strictly related to EU institutional theory, external relations, or market integration, Ingeborg stressed that such new knowledge is equally relevant to EU affairs. In fact, by learning theoretical and technical aspects of other disciplines through the handling of the corresponding policy areas, one manages to obtain a critical ability about political developments regarding those policy areas through the news. When acquiring some familiarity with energy concepts, for example, one is stimulated to keep following the news about energy sources, innovations, market prices and production; in this way, it is possible to have a clearer idea about the EU’s involvement in energy policy, and ability to assess its performance and formulate a pertinent opinion. In other words, it is possible to become an EU expert not only by studying the EU itself but also by analysing what the EU deals with. However, Ingeborg recognised that when entering into contact with so many concepts that are in very different theoretical domains than political science and European integration, it is possible to encounter topics that do not attract your interest or do not stimulate your attention to follow the development of those topics in the future. Here Ingeborg provided us with a key piece of advice: “you shouldn’t be afraid to tell your colleagues or manager what your interests are.”

While emphasising the immense potential to acquire theoretical knowledge that can be derived from a practical experience such as an internship, Ingeborg also admitted that this might not be the case outside of EU consultancies. She explained that she “[has] some friends working in EU institutions that deal with specific topics, but it still depends where you work”.  Generally speaking, consultancies can be considered to have a broader portfolio because they have a lot of different clients, each one with specific needs, while in EU institutions mandates can be much less interdisciplinary.

In short

By renouncing pursuing an exchange or minor programme for an internship, and by deviating from an academic or theoretical path of secondary education to a more practical one in a working-environment, it is still possible to enlarge the conceptual framework with which one analyses the surrounding world. An internship will give you experience in handling certain issues and policy domains and, as Ingeborg said, this is a “really good tester” to confirm or disprove what your interests are. It is true that studies often determine the nature of your career, but it can also work the other way around: a brief professional experience can help you determine what you actually want to study more accurately. However, the learning potential of internships fades away if one does not keep following developments in those disciplines, the implications in the corresponding policy areas, and does not make an effort in constructing a personal opinion. Moreover, from what Ingeborg said, it seems that EU consultancies have a comparative advantage over other kinds of actors that offer internships in Brussels since they have a broader set of issues to combine and learn from. The degree of interdisciplinarity experienced in a consultancy office matches the academic programmes such as global studies, European studies, or university college, where students seesaw between several disciplines without ever specialising in one. General knowledge about the EU is fundamental to understanding it and working with it, especially when doing an internship; specialisation can come at a later stage.

An internship can help you determine what you really want in the future, other than giving you more competitiveness in the labour market. However, the choice between minor, exchange, and internship is not the choice of your life, and you should take into account other factors that this article does not mention in order to make the best out of it. Moreover, an internship can be done either during your bachelor's or master's, but usually, bachelor's students are underqualified for an extremely interesting and highly valuable position. So bachelor’s students might just opt for a minor or exchange, and experience the academic contest for longer, which is something that Ingeborg also decided to do during her bachelor's by going on exchange at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. It is important to remember that, tendentially, the academic context and the time spent at university are what most adults regret from their youth, and define as the ‘best years of their life’. Ultimately, as Ingeborg rightly pointed out, in a choice between a minor, exchange, or internship “your priority may also be to have fun”, and nobody will ever blame you for making that choice.