Every decision Ava Davis of Lynchburg made about going to college came down to math.
“I knew that I would have to pay for all of my school myself,” she said.
The financial aid she got from Longwood University in Farmville included an athletic scholarship to play soccer, but the academic demands of studying physics and her athletic schedule prevented her from working during the school year.
Summer was her only chance to make money to cover whatever expenses her financial aid didn’t.
“As much as I want to gain experience and have a valuable time during whatever I do over the summer, the main goal for me is that I have to make money,” she said. “That’s just so that I can make sure that I will make it through the year with what I have.”
After two summers working for a small engineering firm in Lynchburg, the summer after junior year offered a new opportunity: an undergraduate research program at the University of Virginia. The 10-week program came with housing, a dining allowance and a stipend that worked out to about $15 an hour.
She knew money would be tight if she did the program. A grant from Longwood designed for students seeking work experience gave her some breathing room.
A 2024 grant program from the Virginia Talent + Opportunity Partnership awarded $100,000 each to 12 state universities to support students participating in work-based learning, including internships.
Students then applied to their schools for financial assistance. Across the 12 schools, 659 students received support funds.
V-TOP distributes state funds to higher education institutions and employers to foster the expansion of access to work-based learning opportunities for college students. A collaboration of the State Council for Higher Education for Virginia, the Virginia Chamber Foundation and the Virginia Business Higher Education Council, it was established in 2018 by legislators seeking to stop the brain-drain of graduating college students. More than half of the state’s graduates leave within five to 10 years of graduating, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Internships have become increasingly important to college students as employers seek entry-level workers who already have some relevant experience in their industry.
But internships are often unpaid or underpaid, creating a divide between college students who can afford to pursue them and those who can’t.
Boosting student exposure to internships can be tricky, said Alisha Bazemore, assistant director of innovative work-based learning initiatives at V-TOP.
“That’s a common thread, the geographic location and access for students to actually get to these opportunities,” Bazemore said.
“Every institution has a demographic of students that they still need to make sure that they’re providing some level of support and access for them to participate,” she said, whether that demographic is an underrepresented community, first-generation students, or students from a low socioeconomic background.
Student support grants are one avenue V-TOP is using to help colleges and universities explore solutions to those challenges for their students.
2024 grant program provided money for student needs
College students traditionally receive credit to complete an internship, but internships usually occur outside classroom hours. That leaves some students with the decision to apply for internships or find a job to make an hourly wage in their spare time.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers, a membership organization that connects college career professionals and employers and tracks job market trends, has been pushing for employers to offer paid internships for students, Bazemore said. She called paid internships “the gold standard,” though that standard is far from being the norm.
In Virginia, more than 45,000 college students participated in some type of internship in fiscal year 2025, according to V-TOP. Only about 12% of them got paid.
Unpaid internships were the primary reason students requested support funds at Longwood University, where Ava Davis went to school.
The school awarded its funds to 20 students for summer and fall 2024, with awards ranging from $2,000 to $2,500.
Davis was surprised to get a $2,500 grant from Longwood, especially since her UVA undergraduate research program was paid.
The award couldn’t have come at a better time, she said: The old car she used to drive back and forth to Longwood broke down in winter 2024, and Davis didn’t have the money for the long list of repairs it needed to get back on the road.
For a while, she borrowed her sister’s car. When she got her grant money from Longwood, she put it toward buying the Honda from her sister to replace the one she had been driving.
“I have the title. It’s my own car, which is a great feeling,” she said. “That allowed me to travel to Charlottesville, do that internship, and also be able to go to school there that coming year.”
Davis is wrapping up a cooperative program between Longwood and UVA. She spent three years at Longwood studying physics before moving up to UVA for two years to complete her bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering. The joint program gave her a head start in her career, but meant she had to give up playing soccer — and her soccer scholarship — for her senior year of college.
But Davis said that the cooperative program and her internship were worth the effort. The research program at UVA allowed her to meet with her master’s program advisors in advance of her move to Charlottesville for the academic year. She felt more confident, after her 10 weeks in the material science lab, that she was pursuing the right path for her career.
Alongside the technical skills she gained in the lab, there were the soft skills, too. Her research experience got her out of her comfort zone, Davis said, and she got more comfortable speaking up.
“It helped me to learn to be —” she paused to think, “not necessarily assertive, but more advocating for what I need in an environment to be successful,” she said.
With financial aid, students had time and space to consider career paths
At the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, 13 students received grants in 2024 to cover expenses during their internships. The average award amount was $4,000.
Students doing undergraduate research on campus were also eligible for support grants; an additional seven received an average of $1,370.
The money awarded to UVA Wise students went primarily toward meals, transportation and lodging, said Tonya Nations, director of career discovery and planning at UVA Wise. The application review committee gave each grantee an extra $200 for unexpected costs they might encounter during their internships.
Emil Orea received $1,500 through the program in summer 2024. That spring, Orea, a computer science major from Marion, took an internship as an ambassador for Streamwise, a program that facilitates STEM learning activities for children and college students in Southwest Virginia.
Orea has taught weeklong high school coding camps, a technology conference for local educators, and organized robotics competitions for Streamwise, which is based on the UVA Wise campus.
The internship paid minimum wage, which was $12 per hour in summer 2024. Orea, who is in the honors program at Wise, used his internship support grant toward housing and groceries. He lived on campus that summer, but said the university didn’t offer a summer meal plan.
Orea doesn’t have a car. He could use MetGo, the county’s on-demand ride service offering free and low-cost trips, to get to the grocery store. But MetGo only runs until 5 p.m, and only during the work week.
“A lot of times I would just walk to the grocery store,” he said. The walk took an hour. Sometimes he could get what he needed from Family Dollar, 20 minutes away on foot.
Despite the logistical challenges of obtaining groceries, Orea said that having support from UVA Wise’s internship fund allowed him to be more engaged and involved with his internship. Otherwise, he would have had to take a job in town to supplement his internship income.
“I was able to devote all my time just to Streamwise and be really focused on it, instead of having to divide my time and energy and attention,” he said.
Virginia Military Institute cadet Brooks Freeman was also able to focus on his internship thanks to the grant he received from his school.
He completed an unpaid internship at the domestic relations office for El Paso County, Texas. There, he assisted attorneys reviewing legal documents for people representing themselves in cases for matters such as divorce, paternity or child support.
Freeman’s father was stationed with the Army in the area, but his father’s policy was that if Freeman was living at home after turning 21, he would need to pay rent and provide his own groceries.
Freeman applied for a few jobs, but it would have meant working at his internship from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., then immediately going to work at a warehouse or somewhere similar until around 10 p.m., he said.
Freeman was one of 40 VMI students, known as cadets, who received support for a summer internship. He got about $2,500 and put it toward rent, plus groceries and fuel to drive to the office.
“I really didn’t know if I wanted to be a lawyer until I actually had hands-on experience doing that sort of stuff,” he said.
Since he didn’t need to take a part-time job, he spent his free time starting to study for the LSAT to get into law school.
He graduated VMI in 2025 and is now in his first year of law school at Regent University in Virginia Beach.
Ongoing work focuses on college and university capacity for internships
Across institutions, students who received 2024 support funds while completing internships earned an average hourly wage of $17.66.
That’s below the national average intern pay of $22 per hour, according to NACE data. But it far surpasses the state minimum wage, which currently sits at $12.41.
Beyond the financial benefit to students, interns tracked during their student support grants led to jobs after graduation. Among students who got financial support, 56 of the 659 became full-time employees where they interned.
The student support grants were only awarded once. But a new set of recurring grants offered by V-TOP focus on the same objectives. Known as impact grants, these competitive grants are open to two- and four-year institutions, including nonprofit private colleges in Virginia.
So far, 42 institutions have received impact grants to expand participation in internship and work-based learning, with awards ranging from $25,000 to $250,000.
Schools have been able to use some of that money toward student support.
Longwood got one of the impact grants and was able to continue its stipends to students through the fall semester of 2025. “We’re still looking at a small school population, and trying to figure out how much the true need of the entire university is, and how we could address that,” said Liz Narehood, senior director of career and professional engagement at Longwood.
Some schools have put a portion of their grant funds toward professional attire for students. UVA Wise offers a free clothing closet on campus, but has also awarded money to students to shop for new clothing.
“We’re largely first generation, and we’re largely low income,” Nations said. “And being low income, you can apply and get [an] opportunity, but you can’t always afford all the other things that come with it.” Nations is also a regional coordinator for V-TOP.
Students applied and wrote a short essay, and each selected student got $250. The college covered transportation 90 minutes each way to the nearest major shopping mall in Bristol, Tennessee.
“And we provide lunch,” Nations said. “You don’t want to shop on an empty stomach.”
The college has continued offering these shopping trips, Nations said. She said students aren’t always looking for a coat and tie. Sometimes it’s athletic or outdoor clothing to work at a summer camp. Once, she said, they made a detour to a uniform store for a nursing student who needed scrubs.
Rethinking the shape of work-based learning
As colleges across Virginia work to expand their students’ access to internships, they’re not focusing solely on summer- or semester-long internships. From project-based remote work to on-campus positions, schools are building out a variety of opportunities for students to gain work experience relevant to their career path.
Across the road from the sprawling lawns of UVA Wise, tucked in the back corner of a nondescript building that holds the school’s finance and human resources offices, a cluster of rooms houses a well-known independent nonprofit that produces performing arts events in far Southwest Virginia.
Inside one of ProArt’s offices, a small windowless room painted a rich red, sits Hunter Addington. He works a few days a week to process donations, reconcile bank statements and update the subscriber database.
Addington is just 20 years old.
He is a junior double majoring in accounting and history at UVA Wise. Addington is one of a series of interns who have worked for the organization over nearly 10 years, each one training the next.
Addington works eight to 12 hours a week for $15 an hour. He’ll continue his internship straight through until he graduates in spring 2027.
The internship offers substantial value and consistency to an organization that has just two full-time employees, ProArt’s executive director said. And it gives interns like Addington real-world experience in his field just a few minutes from home.
“It’s one big thing on my resume,” he said, that will boost his applications to full-time jobs or graduate school.
Addington knew he wanted to do an internship in college. After he changed his major to accounting at the start of his sophomore year, this one came to him. One of Addington’s accounting professors selects top students for consideration every few years whenever ProArt’s current intern is preparing to graduate.
The goal is to have a student stay on for several years, said Michael McNulty, the executive director of ProArt. The nearly 50-year-old organization produces 25-30 arts events in Wise and Dickenson counties each year.
Internships like Addington’s at ProArt benefit students who might otherwise struggle to find a relevant internship in the surrounding rural area, McNulty said. “It’s incredibly valuable to them.”
It could be their only chance to get professional experience that gives students “a leg up” when they’re looking for their next internship or a full-time job, McNulty said.
Gaining career experience during college is encouraged so much at UVA Wise that the public school, which is part of the University of Virginia, added it as a requirement for graduation in fall 2024.
Students can fulfill the experiential learning activity requirement via internships, undergraduate research, volunteer work or study abroad opportunities. Some academic courses also count. Students must complete a reflection document in order to receive credit for experiential learning.
UVA Wise’s new requirement for experiential learning was a motivating factor in applying for V-TOP’s 2024 student support grants, Nations said. Though the new requirement offered options for students, the college wanted to ensure students could take advantage of the opportunities that best fit their interests and fields of study.
Addington was one of 19 students doing internships who received support funds from the college for summer and fall 2025 from a combination of V-TOP grant money and the college’s fundraising department. He received $1,500.
The honors student said his tuition “isn’t much” after scholarships and financial aid. He lives at home in Wise and commutes to campus. For five summers in a row, Addington has worked part-time doing farm work and helping with bottling at a nearby vineyard. This past summer, he made $14 an hour there, plus his income from ProArt.
Some of his biggest expenses, he said, include gasoline and textbooks. For fall 2025, both his accounting classes had books added up to about $400 — and that was just for the digital access codes, not for physical books, he said.
He said the internship grant he got would take care of some of those extra costs. “Not only is it going to pay off my expenses for driving to here, or lunch or clothing,” Addington recalled thinking. “But it’s also going to pay for the rest of my tuition.”
Addington considers himself “blessed” to have a long-term position with ProArt while he’s enrolled. He would like to go to Virginia Tech for graduate school to continue to study accounting, but said he can only do it if he gets a graduate assistantship that would help pay for his degree.
“I feel like the more things I have on my belt, the better it’s going to look,” he said.
Microinternships, on-campus work eliminate some barriers
Qualifying internships for UVA Wise’s graduation requirement include micro-internships, short projects that students can sign up to complete for companies. The school uses an online platform to facilitate micro-internships for students, which are paid and usually take place virtually. Students can stack three microinternship projects to count as their experiential learning requirement.
The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia supports the use of microinternships to increase access to work-based learning. For one, it eases some of the competition for the limited number of internships available in the state. For the 2024-2025 academic year, state data shows there were fewer than 28 internships available per 1,000 students enrolled at a college in Virginia, according to state data.
Short-term internships also reduce some of the barriers for students, such as transportation or needing to relocate for several months.
“Some of these activities can last about two weeks or can last a month … students can participate in these activities virtually and connect with the employer virtually,” said Alisha Bazemore at V-TOP.
Virginia Tech is another college that has expanded its options for internships. In the past few years, it has started placing students as interns in various offices around campus.
“We really wanted to tap into our professionals that are right here in Blacksburg to provide opportunities for students,” said Becca Scott, director of professional development and experiential initiatives at Tech.
The university is the largest employer in Montgomery County, according to data from the state workforce development office.
Virginia Tech used some of the money from its 2024 V-TOP student support grant to start a wage match program for on-campus internships. Tech matched up to 50% of wages for internship positions and was able to match about 30 positions within campus departments, Scott said.
Scott said some departments may have had the ability to hire a student already, but could create a formal internship thanks to the wage match. Other offices could add an additional intern because of the match.
“If we want all those students to be able to participate in internships and experiential learning, we’ve really got to get creative on how students are getting those experiences,” Scott said.
Tech has launched an ongoing student internship support fund with additional V-TOP funding and plans to seek additional grant opportunities. The Ut Prosim Internship Support Fund offers up to $5,000 to qualifying undergraduate students completing internships in Virginia.
The fund limits awards to students doing unpaid internships and underpaid ones — internships where a student’s cost to take part is more than the wage they would earn.
About 65 students have received awards from the Ut Prosim fund since it was launched in spring 2025, Scott said.
Still, not everyone stays
Radford University has also been working to increase work-based learning opportunities by rethinking what counts as an internship.
Some classes work with real-world clients to do case studies for a course, said Jeanne Mekolichick, associate provost for academic affairs and a sociology professor at the public university in Radford. Similarly, part-time jobs on campus could be adjusted to include project management and goal-planning elements to create a more robust experience for students.
Eighty-one percent of students in Radford’s 2024 graduating class participated in at least one experiential learning opportunity, Mekolichick said. The three most popular were internships, undergraduate research and special trainings, which include experiences like field work, apprenticeships or capstone projects.
“The more we are infusing and intentionally thinking about the whole campus as … a place for education broadly, within and beyond the classroom, that we open up the idea to thinking about all of these opportunities” that prepare students for their next steps, said Mekolichick, who was previously associate provost of research, faculty success and strategic initiatives at Radford.
Increasing opportunities, however, doesn’t guarantee students will stay after graduation.
Even when it comes to internships, location varies widely, Mekolichick said of Radford students. Students may want to stay local to Radford to get work experience, but some want to do an internship back home over the summer. Still others seek out a particular employer.
Radford senior Utibeenoabasi Udoeyop spent the past two summers interning for AutoZone at the parts retailer’s corporate headquarters in Memphis.
The computer science major had an internship offer back home in Falls Church for summer of 2024, but it wasn’t a great match with her specialty in data science, Udoeyop said.
Aid from Highlander Works — Radford’s fund to support interns launched through the V-TOP grant last year — made it possible for Udoeyop to go further from home for the right internship fit. “If I hadn’t gotten [the Highlander Works grant] I probably would not have taken the offer” from AutoZone, she said. Her award of about $4,000 went toward her airfare to Memphis, and toward her half of a downtown apartment subsidized by AutoZone that was walking distance to the office.
She said her summer in Memphis was life-changing. “I learned so much about myself as a person,” Udoeyop said, as well as professionally. Her internship went so well she got an offer to come back a second summer.
As schools like Radford think about opening up more opportunities for students to get work experience, they’re thinking about what comes after, too. “We also want to be able, for us and for them, to say, OK. So you had this experience. What did that translate for you in your next steps?”
For Udoeyop, the path forward is unclear.
She applied to an accelerated master’s program in computer science at Virginia Tech. If she doesn’t get in, she’ll look for a full-time position with AutoZone with the plan of living in Memphis for a few years.
“But I’m at peace with both options,” she said.
This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.
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Correction Nov. 11: The percentage of Radford University’s class of 2024 that completed experiential learning was incorrect in an earlier version of this story. It has been corrected.