Internships Abroad: The View from Paris

The following observations result from eleven years of experience in the field, more specifically in France, a setting that raises particularly challenging and probing questions. France ranks high among the nations most resistant to deregulation as well as strong on cultural exception, endowed with a combative attitude about the supremacy of the French language, and nurtured by a checkered relationship with America and its hegemony: no two countries compete more earnestly in their respective attempts to influence the world. Some two million French students serve as interns as part of their education. No other European country comes anywhere near this statistic.