<p>[Credit for Internships: Is It Due?
By KEVIN CAREY
New York Times
January 30, 2013](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/education/edlife/internships-for-credit-merited-or-not.html”>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/education/edlife/internships-for-credit-merited-or-not.html</a>)
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<p>I hate it, but it is a money maker. And kids without contacts in their field are thus able to make some on their own. It has become a rite of passage at schools.</p>
<p>There are many companies (like my own) which do not offer unpaid internships. We encourage anyone who wants to do volunteer work to contact the thousands of not-for-profits who are happy to have unpaid workers show up to help them stretch their payroll budget.</p>
<p>You can’t imagine how much criticism I have heard over the years from friends/neighbors/acquaintances who think I can get their kid an unpaid internship. I explain that we follow the letter and spirit of the law which requires us to pay at least minimum wage to anyone who works for us and folks act like we are violating untold social mores.</p>
<p>Yes, there are many big companies where someone with “pull” can get your kid an unpaid opportunity. There are also museums and homeless shelters and congressional constituent offices and hospital gift shops that would love the free labor.</p>
<p>Of course, the unpaid internship is basically a way of selecting for students from wealthy families who can take it in lieu of needing paid work to pay for the next semester of school.</p>
<p>What better return is there for a summer spent as a free intern than to be at the top of the list next year when hiring starts? Our last intern from 3 years ago now makes over $100K with a BA and no other experience. Well on his way to living the dream. Many of his friends are not and live at home. He recently married and bought a nice house @24.</p>
<p>I think anytime you can get experience, (paid or unpaid) it is a good idea. BUT…paying expensive tuition while at your co-op/internship, is not right. And some schools leave it to the student to find the internship. Not all co-ops are guaranteed, which really left me scratching my head. I guess it depends on the field you are studying and what you need to gain experience. It is not likely to change.</p>
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<p>The problem is that many employers have no intention of hiring unpaid interns when they graduate college. Instead employers count on the next wave of desperate youth to work for free.</p>
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<p>Yes, this is what I object to.</p>
<p>My friend’s son is in a computer animation engineering type program which he loves. He so wants to go into this field which is totally foreign to the family. They haven’t the slightest idea about how things work in the field and don’t know a soul working at that sort of thing. The program does require a course, usually taken over the summer that is an internship, and it does match you up with a company. They are as happy as can be that their son has the opportunity and are gladly paying for it. They are hoping that he will mesh with the company and find opportunities for a job thereafter or meet folks there that go to other firms and he can get inroads that way. Son has not been able to find anything on his own in the field that holds a candle to the internship. He will be repeating it this summer with another firm. </p>
<p>Companies do hire from their intern pool as the continuous work done, need a year round full time person. So it isn’t all to no avail. And given a stack of resumes and job apps to sort, it’s easier to say, “how about that guy from last summer who was so on the ball”. So yes, it does happen that an internship leads to employment. But it can also put a kid on the “Yuk LIst”, something no one wants to talk about. As I said before the work given to an internship is not something that needs a continuity so in many cases, it is not a real test for a job in the field and as often as not, a kid can make an unfavorable impression. And I’ve heard about this a lot being of the age and around people who hire interns.</p>
<p>“Of course, the unpaid internship is basically a way of selecting for students from wealthy families who can take it in lieu of needing paid work to pay for the next semester of school.”</p>
<p>My son’s school awards grants to students who take unpaid internships. He had to apply and was awarded $2400 for a summer internship. He worked for a Judge and did research on prison inmates who plea bargained and their rate of recidivism (or something like that.)</p>
<p>There are degrees that require an unpaid internship and charge tuition for it at the same time. Occupational therapists, teachers, nurses, physical therapists, and many others have this as part of the degree program. As an OT student, I had to pay for credits to do 6 months of full time fieldwork, far from home while covering living expenses too. That fieldwork was invaluable and had me functioning as a full time therapist with little to no supervision by the time I was done. Teachers have to do student teaching as part of their coursework and nurses do clinical rotations. Why does this seem so off when it’s the business world doing it?</p>
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<p>Because it is not the requirement for those degrees.</p>
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<p>barrons,</p>
<p>What is your company’s rationale for not paying summer interns?</p>
<p>Our former interns are living the dream also- because we paid them when they interned here, and we pay them when they return after graduating.</p>
<p>All my kids did unpaid internships- and had to scramble during their off hours working retail and clerical for cash. But these were with museums and political campaigns and NGO’s (and a couple of times they were subsidized by their college with a stipend and fellowship to pay rent, travel and food while they interned, and enough to cover them until they got back to campus in the fall… which was really a blessing.)</p>
<p>But work for free at a Fortune 500 company? Or another profit-making organization? That’s nuts and the faster the Department of Labor shuts this scam down, the happier the companies will be who play by the rules.</p>
<p>I did an unpaid internship for a senator. They did not offer paid internships. We had the option of doing it for credit but there was no way I was paying 1200+ for an internship. So I did it without the credit. Still got to put it on my resume, and it helped launch me in to a job with the state. IMO, it was definitely worth it but it did not seem so at the time when I was barely sleeping due to juggling everything.</p>
<p>One of the things I like about Northeastern’s Co-op program is they help the students get real paid jobs for their co-ops, and while the student is on co-op for up to 6 months there is no tuition paid. The real problem is not necessarily unpaid internships, but the combination of paying tuition while the student is not at school but “working” for no pay.</p>
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<p>Perhaps he is lucky that he was able to take the unpaid internship, while his friends from poorer families had to pass it up because they needed paid work to afford the next semester of school.</p>
<p>^^^^ This.</p>
<p>I wonder if the libertarians looking at it from an economics point of view see this phenomenon as just an indication that the market clearing pay level for whatever type of entry level jobs these are has fallen to negative (i.e. not just fallen to zero for unpaid internships, but negative in that the employee has to pay to get the job).</p>
<p>Perhaps that should be a warning to people considering working in whatever these types of jobs are that (a) getting these jobs is fiercely competitive, and (b) one has to be from a supportive wealthy family to even afford to get in the game as far as the entry level unpaid (or pay tuition) internships go.</p>
<p>Actually I should have noted in this case he had graduated and was trying to get a foot in the door so he initiated the intern idea with no promises. So it did not impact his ability to pay for school and he was able to live at home until going FT. You know, life is not quite fair and maybe if you are that poor you have to make a decision–invest the $$$ in the free job and borrow more the next year or work eve/wknds during the summer and do the int during the day. Where there’s a will…</p>