Being both supervised and supervising, intern and internship tutor: it sounds like a joke, but it is now possible, thanks to a circular of the General Directorate of Higher Education and Professional Integration (Dgesip), published on February 15 and addressed to heads of higher education establishments.
As part of a section on the relaxation of internship conditions during Covid-19, when offers fell by 22% in the private sector in 2020, a paragraph draws attention and creates a new form of contract: the self-internship, or the“Welcome by himself of a student entrepreneur”. “The internship agreement will then include as the host organization the company of the student entrepreneur”, specifies the circular.
The fact that a student devotes himself to his own business is not new: in general, the internship is replaced by the status of student entrepreneur, created in 2014, but remains little used because it is often limited to projects supported by student centers. for innovation, transfer and entrepreneurship (Pépite). At Ensta Paris, an engineering school, only five students out of 220 benefit from this status each year: “We cannot go further, because it is a personalized follow-up which requires a lot of investment”, explains Didier Lebert, training manager.
“Granted to the legal ceiling”
The circular then makes it possible to make the legal framework more flexible and broad. Asked, the Union of autoentrepreneurs “Encourages this self-internship process and the spirit of promoting entrepreneurship that governs this process, on condition that it is supervised in order to avoid possible abuses (false employment contracts or misappropriation of the spirit of the internship) ”.
With the self-internship, discovering the world of work and integrating into a team seem difficult. Antoine Frankart, an e-sport consultant who experimented with a form of self-training before the hour, in 2009, in IT, defends his meaning: “When you are an entrepreneur, you have to manage accounting, marketing… you have to spend your life training yourself. For motivated people, it is okay not to have a trainer. “
The text however turns to the ubiquitous on the question of remuneration: “Please note, the internship must be paid up to the legal ceiling for accident coverage issues. “ Who should pay this intern employed by himself? Himself, and this is mandatory if the agreement extends for more than two months.
For the time being, concrete examples are rare. At the Ecole Polytechnique, no student out of the 550 per promotion has this status, while 3% of graduates start their own business. “Our students easily find internships in companies, the relaxation of remote internships was enough”, we justify. HEC Paris does not offer this type of internship either, and has not registered any request, like Ensta Paris, which prefers its system.
Didier Lebert, however, welcomes the device, which could, according to him, call others after the crisis: “Often, student entrepreneurs are a bit slowed down because they have to go on an internship. Such a device would therefore make it possible to extend entrepreneurship to more students. “