Time Inc., the parent company of TIME magazine, has long demonstrated its support for higher education through such activities as direct financial aid and matching grants for employees' gifts to their favorite schools. In part, this is enlightened self-interest: such support helps build the pool of talent on which journalism draws. But over the past seven years the company has also nurtured talent directly. Through Time Inc.'s summer-intern program, headed by Editorial Director Ralph Graves and administered by Personnel's College Relations Manager Katherine Vinton Taylor, a select group of undergraduates spend their vacation months working as full-time paid journalists, developing their writing, reporting, researching and photographic skills. For the company, says Taylor, the benefits are substantial: "We strengthen our ties with the world of education, and we get an exceptionally talented group of summer employees."

TIME'S four 1983 interns bring varied backgrounds to their tasks: Adam Cohen, reporting in the New York bureau, is a social studies major at Harvard and associate managing editor of the Harvard Crimson. Mary Anne Golon, a University of Florida journalism major who has taken photographs for Florida papers, is working in the photography department. William Guest of Yale is a history major who has contributed a weekly editorial to the Yale Daily News, and Ben Spier, a Russian language and literature major at Amherst, has written theater and movie reviews for the Amherst Student. Spier and Guest will rotate between researching, reporting and writing.

In all, 20 interns won jobs this summer at seven of Time Inc.'s eight magazines, the Picture Collection, Time-Life Books and Teletext, a video information and entertainment service. An editorial committee selected them from among the 66 applications sent to Time Inc. by 23 universities. Says Senior Editor Jose M. Ferrer III, who helped choose TIME'S interns: "In reading their clippings and personal statements, I looked for intelligence and judgment." Deputy Chief of Correspondents R. Edward Jackson had the same responsibility for TIME'S News Service. Says he: "I tried to pick people who could work for us some day." In fact, 13 of the previous 89 interns are now staff members. They include TIME Staff Writer Kenneth W. Banta (1979) and Bonn Correspondent Gary Lee (1978), who did the major reporting for this week's cover story on David Bowie. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.