As the director of the Regional College Talent Retention Initiative, Jones is working with several other companies and administrators throughout the state to develop a central Web site, www.interninmichigan.com, where students and employers can interact and post the latest position openings.

Developers hope the site will be up by Jan. 1, in time for students to find summer internships, and Jones said she hopes about 25,000 internships will be created in the next few years by centralizing internship searches and creating more opportunities.

“Students are leaving — we know that from surveys — and employers need help,” Jones said. “We’re working to bridge the divide. The need for students to consider interning early is very important since employers are going to use that as a way to see what students have been doing.”

With an economy that has fallen to astronomical lows, there’s a strong need to keep recent graduates in the state, said Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future Inc., a nonprofit organization that works to create new ideas for Michigan’s economic future.

“There’s a general pattern over the past 15 or 20 years that more college students are moving out of the state than moving in,” Glazer said.

All of Michigan’s 83 counties saw increases in unemployment in the past year, according to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth’s September report, released Oct. 23.

Glazer said the driving force behind internship development is that students can go on to receive full-time jobs with the company afterward.

“You don’t know until you try it, but we think that’s the way of the future,” Glazer said.

The quality of internships has, for the most part, increased over time as students are generally getting to do meaningful work when they intern, said Paul Jaques, MSU’s internship developer.

“Businesses used to take juniors and seniors and have them do photocopying work and run errands,” Jaques said. “But it’s definitely different work from five or 10 years ago, and businesses are looking for freshmen and sophomores too now.”

Several colleges at MSU require students to set up internships during their junior or senior years in order to get necessary credits toward their degree.

In the James Madison College, students are required to do an internship, and the geographic location of the place where students decide to intern could go a long way in shaping students’ decisions of where they want to go after graduation, said Grant Littke, director of field experience for the college.

“We have students who come back from internships abroad and know exactly where they want to move when they’re done, and other students who come back and want to do well locally,” Littke said.

Local business owners said although some internships don’t pay as well as others, students usually leave with unmatched experience.

“It’s a win-win situation — we get IT help and students get experience,” said Kurt Weiss, communications director for the Michigan Department of Information Technology.