The University seeks to prepare students who have the ability attributes and attitude to engage in discovery learning for their roles as future employees. Internships enable individuals to develop the skills, attributes, abilities behaviours insights and attitudes needed to fill workplace positions successfully while observing, questioning, reflecting on and learning from the practices of job incumbents.

PIA Postgraduate Internship is designed to provide students with real life work experience in local mainland Chinese, and/or international contexts for a clearly defined period of time. Students are expected to gain practical understanding of the professional contexts and operations of public organizations private sector NGOs non-profit organisations or political-related organizations and to apply some of the programme-related theories, skills and work ethics they have learned in the programme curriculum.

PIA Postgraduate Internship provides a logical channel for the application of theoretical concepts and are a source of practitioner input into curriculum development. They are also an additional forum for student assessment. From the perspective of the sponsoring organizations internships allow the evaluation of future employees, while students gain an opportunity to enhance their understanding and to reflect critically upon the nature of the world of work. They also gain an insight into the concerns of potential employers.