Chapter 2 Enhancing the Academic Internship Learning Experience for Business Education—A Critical Review and Future Directions Maike Gerken, Bart Rienties, Bas Giesbers and Karen D. Könings Introduction The transition from life as a student to the world of work is not always easy and can bare a lot of difficulties. Graduates have to adapt to a new working world when they enter the job market, e.g., applying their theoretical knowledge to a work-related con- text. Often it is assumed that business graduates can directly transfer their knowledge from business education to the workplace and use their acquired skills in their first job (Arts et al. 2006; Mintzberg 2004). However, both research and practice indicates that this is often not the case and that graduates underperform when starting their first job (Arts et al. 2006; Tynjälä 2008). The transition can be eased when graduates know what they are getting into. Tynjälä (2008) indicated that school learning should adopt certain features of work learning in order to integrate theory and practice. In- tegration can be done through “mediating tools” like academic internships (Tynjälä 2008). Academic internships are defined as an opportunity to integrate work-related experience into graduate education by participating in scheduled and supervised M. Gerken () Department for Educational Research and Development, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Tongersestraat 49, 6211 Maastricht, Netherlands e-mail: m.gerken@maastrichtuniversity.nl B. Rienties Centre for Educational andAcademic Development, University of Surrey, 5th Floor Duke of Kent Building, Guildford Surrey GU2 7XH, Surrey, UK e-mail: B.Rienties@surrey.ac.uk B. Giesbers Department for Educational Research and Development, School of Business and Economics, Maastricht University, Tongersestraat 53, 6211 Maastricht, Netherlands e-mail: s.giesbers@maastrichtuniversity.nl K. D. Könings Department of Educational Development and Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Universiteitssingel 60, 6229 Maastricht, Netherlands e-mail: Kd.konings@maastrichtuniversity.nl P.Van den Bossche et al. (eds.), Learning at the Crossroads of Theory and Practice, 7 Advances in Business Education and Training 4, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-2846-2_2, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012