Popular Internship Program Is Curtailed

Between Christmas and New Year’s, President Barack Obama issued an executive order that curtailed a popular but controversial federal internship program.

The order gives the Federal Career Intern Program -- whose popularity as a means for quickly hiring new employees has skyrocketed since it was created in 2001 -- two more months before shutting down in March.

The directive also:

>> establishes three pathways for students and recent graduates to enter the federal workplace.

>> consolidates a host of disparate government internship programs into a single system targeted to students enrolled in a variety of educational institutions

>> expands the eligibility for enrolling in the Presidential Management Fellows Program, a three-decades-old leadership development program for advanced- degree candidates

The federal Office of Personnel Management is expected to issue a proposed rule in the Federal Register in the coming months implementing the order, which is expected to be fully implemented within a year.

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