How to Get Your University to Approve a Bali Internship
Most universities will approve a Bali internship. The ones that do not are usually missing one thing: documentation. Here is exactly what to prepare, how to approach your coordinator, and how to handle the most common pushback.
The question is not whether a Bali internship qualifies for university credit. In almost every case, it does — the location is not the variable. The variable is whether the host company can supply the documentation your programme requires.
This guide walks through the process step by step, for Dutch and Belgian students at HBO and WO programmes. The principles apply to French students doing a stage as well.
Step-by-step: getting approval
Get your programme's internship requirements document
Before you do anything else, find out exactly what your programme requires. Every university has an internship guide or handbook (stagebegeleiding, stagehandboek, or similar). Download it. The key things to note: minimum duration in weeks, minimum hours per week, required documents (internship agreement, learning goals, evaluation forms), and whether a three-way contract is needed.
Do not rely on a friend's requirements — programmes differ even within the same university.
Confirm your placement covers the basics
Your placement needs to meet: the minimum duration (typically 10–24 weeks depending on your programme), the weekly hours (usually 32–40 hours), and the role needs to be genuinely in your field. A marketing student doing logistics admin will not pass. A marketing student running content campaigns for a Bali hospitality brand will.
Write one sentence describing what you will actually be doing and why it is relevant to your programme. If you struggle to write that sentence, the coordinator will struggle too.
Collect the documentation from your host company
This is the step where most independent placements fail. You need, at minimum:
- A signed internship agreement (stage-overeenkomst / learning agreement) on company letterhead
- A named supervisor — full name, job title, email address, and phone number
- A written description of the role and key tasks
- Confirmation of start date, end date, and weekly hours
- Completed learning goals aligned to your programme outcomes
If your programme requires evaluation forms, download them from your university portal and send them to your supervisor before you leave — so they know what to expect mid-term and at the end.
Send an initial email to your internship coordinator
Do not just forward a document dump. Send a short, professional email that leads with the relevant information: the company, your role, duration, and a line about why the role is relevant to your programme. Attach the internship agreement and a brief company profile.
Coordinators review many placements. A well-structured email with all the information they need gets a faster, more positive response than a vague "I found a placement in Bali, is that okay?"
Respond to feedback quickly
Coordinators often request minor adjustments — a more detailed role description, a supervisor's academic background, a clarification on weekly hours. Respond within 24–48 hours. Delays here push your approval back by weeks because coordinators manage multiple students.
If the feedback is substantive (e.g. "the role is not sufficiently related to your programme"), treat this as fixable. Ask the coordinator specifically what would need to change, then go back to your host company and adjust the role description or task scope accordingly.
Start the process 8–12 weeks before your intended start date
This is the most commonly ignored piece of advice. Students often start in the final weeks before departure and run out of time for back-and-forth. Approval cycles typically take 2–4 weeks even when everything is smooth. Add time for documents to be signed, re-sent, and processed.
If you are working with a placement agency, the documentation is usually ready within days of your match being confirmed. Start the university approval process immediately once you receive it — do not wait until you have bought flights.
Handling common coordinator objections
"Bali is very far — can you find something closer?"
The distance is not a requirement issue — your programme specifies duration, hours, and relevance, not geography. The placement meets all formal requirements. Here is the signed internship agreement and the role description showing how it aligns with my learning goals. If there is a specific concern about supervision or communication, I am happy to address it.
"We are not familiar with this company."
Provide a one-page company profile: what the company does, how many employees, how long it has been operating, the LinkedIn profile, and the website. Frame your supervisor as a credible professional (include their LinkedIn). Unfamiliarity is not a rejection — it is a request for more context.
"The learning goals are too vague."
Go back to your programme's competency framework and rewrite the learning goals using the exact language your programme uses. If your programme talks about "stakeholder management," use that phrase. If it references specific competencies, map your tasks directly to them. This is administrative, not substantive — it rarely signals a deeper problem with the placement.
"The internship is unpaid — is that allowed?"
Unpaid internships are standard practice for university placements across the Netherlands and Belgium, and are explicitly permitted by most programme policies. The internship agreement covers the learning relationship, not an employment relationship. Confirm with the specific policy language from your programme handbook if needed.
Before you send your approval request — checklist
- Signed internship agreement with company letterhead and both signatures
- Named supervisor: full name, job title, email, phone
- Role description aligned to your study programme
- Start date, end date, and weekly hours confirmed in writing
- Learning goals written in your programme's language
- Evaluation forms sent to supervisor (mid-term and final)
- Timeline: coordinator contacted at least 8 weeks before start
A note on using a placement agency
If you are going through Island Internship or a similar agency, the documentation package — internship agreement, supervisor details, role description — is provided as part of the placement. You still need to submit it to your university and manage the approval process yourself, but the documents are ready from the moment your match is confirmed.
Past Island Internship students have had placements approved at De Haagse Hogeschool, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Maastricht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Hogeschool Rotterdam, and Breda University of Applied Sciences, among others.