<p>The point raised by ucbalumnus is so true, and growing ever more so as internships become the common gateway into many fields. Years ago, DH landed a plum internship at CNN in NYC. Upon starting, he discovered that he was the only ‘regular’ intern there: <em>all</em> the others were fabulously rich (as in stratospherically rich, with famous names along the lines of Vanderbilt and Kennedy–but not those exactly, as DH doesn’t wang to kiss and tell on CC). Of course it makes sense…this was in Manhattan. How many college students can pay tuition, live in New York City, AND work long hours for no pay???</p>
<p>We lived on the Lower East-side in a 10 x 20 tenement walk-up with a crack-house on the 1st floor, a bathtub in the ‘kitchen’ and a sloping floor such that if you dropped anything, the object rolled away <em>at speed</em> until coming to rest in the same low, dingy corner. We never lost anything!
It was a fabulous time. :)</p>
<p>S2’s major required an unpaid internship (11 weeks,at least 400 hours of documented work hours). He got no help from the university. It was up to the student to find the internship. He got nine credit hours for it. We paid. He got an A but not a job offer. It did help him to figure out what he didn’t want to do.</p>
<p>I would like to point out that many poor kids actually can take unpaid internships. Just not the full time ones. It’s not like we’re completely SOL, we just have to work more hours in the summer and/or during the year to make up for it. You do what you have to.</p>
<p>It does bother me that internships FOR CREDIT are required by some schools without financial help. That just seems wrong to me.</p>
<p>Are the “for college credit” internships’ tuition costs considered as part of the normal tuition that one pays for college and covered under any applicable college financial aid?</p>
<p>What bothers me are the unpaid summer internships that require students to enroll for summer school units costing perhaps a couple of thousand dollars. Not only does the student not get paid, but they have to pay for summer school in order to not get paid. If the internship is during the regular semester, then it counts as a class, but it’s not this extra charge.</p>
<p>ucbalumnus: My Occupational Therapy fieldwork was covered by financial aid and the college considered us “full time” even though we only paid for and received 6 credit hours for 40 hours/week of working for 6 months. It was part of the program. We received a grade and had to do it to graduate. Our program was a 4 1/2 year program. That was in the mid-late 80’s. I believe student teaching works the same way though. As do nursing clinicals. </p>
<p>My comment earlier was that it isn’t a bad thing to get that on the job real world training and it may benefit business students as well as nurses, teachers, therapists, etc. </p>
<p>I later supervised fieldwork students in the field. The first 6 or 7 weeks of their placements, they were a LOT of work. The last few weeks, they were functioning independently. It balanced out. I had to be present when they were with patients, but by the end of their time, I was sitting at my desk working on other projects and “listening” and they did all of the documentation. It wasn’t really free help because they were so labor intensive at first. I loved seeing them grow into professionals though :)</p>
<p>And the vast majority of coops are paid. And most of the unpaid ones go only to work-study eligible students who are able to get paid out of their work-study money.</p>
<p>I’m reading this thinking about how ridiculously lucky I was that as somebody who majored in journalism and ultimately wanted to do non-profit work, the closest I came to an unpaid internship was writing for free for a free online magazine and taking a coop for a stipend that was not a full salary. I did a co-op and an internship at separate non-profits that paid hourly wages. I also had a non-profit try to convince me to be a full-time unpaid “intern” there after I graduated from college because their whole office was basically staffed with unpaid interns. They wanted me there because I knew a particular software and had a particular skill and suffice to say I don’t think this really would have fallen under the definition of an internship. If it’s volunteer work, call it that.</p>
<p>We do take unpaid interns at the non-profit that I work at right now but we also have a ridiculously tight budget and make a point of giving them varied experiences and making sure that they leave with a wide breadth of experience. And our interns have generally gotten pretty good jobs right afterwards.</p>
<p>I like the “upto” qualifier. $0 is in that range. I know there’s a few companies out there that pay in that area for internships, but could hardly imagine Drexel even coming close to saying its student could even expect to get something like that. </p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s the internship requiring it be for credit. Why would the company care if the kid pays the college or not? It’s the college requiring an unpaid internship that both happens, and is bad.</p>
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<p>If they want credit for it, I think the idea is that the value the unpaid internship provides + the value of that portion of a degree and all employment benefits conferred by that degree is equal to tuition + the value of labor used on the internship.</p>
<p>Decades ago, I interned (and paid credits) while I completed a degree in a healthcare field. Of course, it was important and valuable and an integral part of my training. Healthcare workers-- nurses/ techs/ therapists/ doctors-- are all required to complete supervised, hands-on training. </p>
<p>That was entirely different than when I switched fields and got an unpaid internship at a for-profit business. I also had to pay for credits because their union required that any intern be receiving college credit. I worked way more than the hours I was expected to work. I did the work of an employee. I actually ended up very sick because I could not afford just to do this internship. At the end of my internship, the boss asked me if I would extend my unpaid internship. I said no. But it would look great on your resume, the boss said. Exhausted and sick, I said no. Oh… then will you work for us if we pay you? Yup, the boss had just made it very clear that they just wanted to get free labor out of me.</p>
Aye, but there’s the rub. If your unpaid intern is “functioning independently,” or you don’t “try to teach them things”, then you’re probably violating the labor law, which requires, among other things, that 1) unpaid interns receive training similar to that they would have in an educational environment, 2) the intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff; and 3) the employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern, and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded. My guess is that MOST unpaid internships violate one or more of those requirements. It’s a real racket for employers, and arguments to the effect that the system has to operate that way are ludicrous. The were no such things as unpaid internships when I attended college, and no requirements for internships of any type. Remarkably, we all graduated, got jobs or went on to further education, and had careers.</p>
<p>I have mixed views on internships. I’ve had friends who’ve had wonderful internships; however, I know someone who had an internship–unpaid–on a graveyard shift! That was a bit of a logistical issue, and I don’t think the hours made it worth the experience. </p>
<p>I’ve also found that the really great internships involved some really useful experience. Two of my friends interned for political candidates over the summer (LA County elections) and made valuable connections while simultaneously getting insight into their professional goals. Another friend interned at a top company in her field, leading her to very strong connections within the field; now, she has an awesome job (not at the same company at all). </p>
<p>But then, of course, there are plenty who can point to the time they wasted on coffee runs and file sorting for nothing but a few credits (and nothing particularly enticing about coming back to repeat the experience). </p>
<p>I think there are some fields where internships are a waste of time, even if they exist. However, in health, education, and some technical fields, I think they’re pretty valuable. And I definitely think that some employers go so far as to exploit their workers because they do want the “unpaid labor,” whether or not they realize that it’s wrong. </p>
<p>When the education bubble bursts, internships will probably take a hit, too.</p>
<p>Back in the day, not sure if it is still done, new graduate hired nurses, not yet passed nursing boards, worked as GN’s(graduate nurses) with a preceptor as it was called. I was a preceptor for many over the years. Labor intensive was an understatement for about 3 months, some picked it up easily, some not so much, which required an extension of their preceptorship and shadowing and hopefully overtime they would take on a greater role. They were paid full salary during this time, so 2 nurses for the price of one for 2-3 months. Hospitals put ALOT of money into training new nurses, especially if their skills are not up to speed and need a lot of hand holding.
Clinicals during school were monitored by the professor, no involvement of staff at all.</p>
<p>In the case of Occupational Therapy fieldwork, if they weren’t functioning as a therapist by the time they finished, they didn’t pass. That was the goal. However, as I noted, I was still in the room during their therapy groups. They were still closely supervised and all of their treatment plans, charting, assessments, discharge summaries, etc. had to be reviewed before it went into the medical record and co-signed by me. I wouldn’t be able to ethically do that if I wasn’t present during each session. They definitely didn’t take the place of staff. There was still daily supervision to provide feedback, even when they really good. Student teaching is the same way, from what I understand. The student teachers may do the lesson plans but the supervising teacher reviews them, discusses them, helps the student revise them as suggested and is present while the student is teaching to interject and provide more feedback as needed. The educational component is there as it requires discussions about how the theories learned in class are applied to the job in real situations. </p>
<p>If they weren’t ready to be an entry level therapist by the last 3 weeks, as I said, they couldn’t pass. I always knew by the mid-term evaluation whether they were going to make it or not. They did receive a grade. How it is structured makes a difference.</p>
<p>I’m definitely not arguing that all internships follow that kind of model. Most do not. I think more should and employers would feel more comfortable hiring new grads knowing that they’d done that job, with intense supervision and modeling. Too often, the interns are the gophers and get no real value aside from knowing how to work the coffee pot and copy machine.</p>
<p>My company hires interns all the time. They are usually recent college graduates. We pay them above minimum wage, give them worthwhile experience (not fetching coffee), and help them get their portfolios together so they have an edge when they start applying for jobs. We have hired a number of them into the company, and those we have had to “turn loose” we keep up with so we can potentially bring them back in the future. We have a big learning curve with our business and it’s a benefit to us to bring in people that know the ropes.</p>