My college engineering junior just went to an internship interview last week with one college research work/study and 6 years of work experience doing a variety of menial/manual labor including managing a team of ESL laborers last year. The interviewer told him he had never seen a resume with so much w-o-r-k on it. I don’t much care if he does an internship or not, it’s not required to graduate and he would never take one where he wasn’t paid. He want’s one bad because he thinks it will be a foot in a door for a potential job after graduation. He’s working the angle that if the company takes him on he can commit to two summers since he won’t graduate until 4.5 years and could return, if they desired to have him after, to full-time employee in January.
Is that what you did when you interned at a publishing house? It wasn’t D’s experience. She did work that actually led to a full time job in publishing.
Unpaid internships can no longer be at a publishing house getting coffee. Unpaid requires that the (private) business be ‘sponsoring’ the intern for college credit. No more free labor. For a government or non-profit, there can be unpaid internships but most do then offer some type of supervision for college credit.
A friend’s daughter did unpaid work in a university (not hers) lab, and I honestly didn’t think it was very fair to her to work for free and get no credit. She did it for the work experience. I think she could have found a paid position.
Non-profits can still have them. My son had two at well-known NGOs. The second one ended up hiring him, and he finished out the project he was working on which resulted in some interesting overseas travel, but in the end he decided he really didn’t like working for NGOs and is planning on going in a completely different direction.
My older son is in comp sci and was handsomely paid for all his internships.
I know that my freshman D was offered an internship at $17/hour in upstate NY which she had to turn down because expenses (rent/food/travel home) would be significantly more than the pay but that would be great for a student who lives in commuting distance from home. She has since taken a 10-week collaborative research offer at school which provides free room and board, a $3000 stipend, and a small discretionary expense fund. From what I gather, there are a lot of opportunities in the upstate NY area for paid internships.
Much depends on the field. In engineering and CS, there are quite a few paid internships. In cinema, unpaid internships are much more common.
The level of pay for DS (soph CS) shocked me. 3x his pay last year, and that shocked me then. For better or worse, it is a bifurcated world.
Our S had a EE fed govt internship which was “modest” compared to private firms. It still paid more than I had expected and well above his living expenses. Non-stem fields tend to pay considerably less.
Supply and demand. In CS high demand, limited supply of students: well paid. In publishing, low demand, tons of students: unpaid.
My older son was making more in a month as an intern than I was bringing in as an architect. That was depressing!
@mathmom, I understand how it can be depressing, but framed somewhat differently, it can be reassuring and joyful. I did well in my career (I’m since retired), but nobody had flown me in for an interview and put me up in a hotel until I was 30 years old. DS got the same treatment as a 20-year old for an internship. Progress. 
He got all that too. I never found it easy to get new jobs in architecture (all caused by moves to be with dh.) Meanwhile same kid’s permanent job just fell his lap. (Thanks to being a good intern.) I’ve never been flown any where, but architecture is notoriously poorly paid. I work for myself now, and the truth is if I worked harder and did more marketing I’m sure I could also earn more than I do.