The Usefulness of a University Branch Office in Overseas Internship Programs for Science and Engineering Majors

The aim of this study is to examine the usefulness of a university branch office in a country to which the university sends its students as part of overseas internship programs to work in that country′s local companies. Eleven Japanese students who took part in internship programs in Malaysia were interviewed about their internship programs to obtain information about how they used the university branch office before, during, and after their internship period. The collected data were analyzed using M-GTA (Modified Grounded Theory Approach). The results revealed that a university branch office performs various important functions during all the phases of internship programs in fulfilling successful overseas internship programs for students.