Does an internship in Business Administration enhance professional competences?

The aim of this study was twofold. First, we want to determine which competences are acquired through an internship, as well as the levels of attainment. Secondly, we want to compare the levels of achievement in two different universities, since we are interested in proving whether the university of origin affects the final results. We thus organized competences following the classification made by the Tuning project, which groups them as instrumental, interpersonal and professional. A questionnaire was distributed among the students participating in internships, and the firms offering them in each university, to assess their perceptions of the competences.We used the SPSS statistical package to conduct a set of mean tests to identify differences between the perceptions of the students and firms. Students acquire a higher level of professional competences than instrumental or interpersonal competences. There are also differences according to university, which suggests its importance