The case against paid internships is long and with much merit. Some of the best points are crystallized in this New York Times op-ed by Anya Kamenetz, whose salvo includes:
1) Unpaid internships are another implicit leg up for rich kids who can afford to work for a summer without money. Otherwise they send less fortunate kids into even worse debt.
2) Internships promote "over-identification" with employers. In other words, we force ourselves to wear a happy face to justify the sacrifice of working without pay. In the long term, this teaches workers to respect their bosses too much to organize unions. After all, if you're grateful to work for nothing, who needs pensions?
3) Interns are like illegal immigrants. Says Kamenetz: "They create an oversupply of people willing to work for low wages, or in the case of interns, literally nothing." But they're worse, because instead of doing the jobs nobody wants to do, college interns do the jobs that everybody their age wants to do, but that only the wealthier can afford.
Shame on you wage-depressing, union-killing interns! But wait. Surely, there is some good to be said about our Intern Nation. For one, internships can be invaluable experience for the jobs students want to pursue. Kamenetz wants to make a point that working for money is ipso facto valuable, because it's money, but I'm not sure it makes sense:
Long hours on your feet waiting tables may not be particularly edifying, but they teach you that work is a routine of obligation, relieved by external reward, where you contribute value to a larger enterprise.Why aren't internships a "routine of obligation" that contribute value to a larger enterprise? As a former intern, I'm not going to be so bold as to put a value on my contribution to the larger organizations where I worked, but I can say that the days felt long and sometimes unedifying and I most certainly learned the meaning of routine obligations. And although the external reward didn't come in the form of a direct deposit, I do think the internships paid off, inasmuch as they led to other internships and, eventually, to jobish things. As a friend of current and former waiters, I agree that those jobs carry lessons and value, but as a friend of current writers, I think I can say with absolute certainty that writing for a magazine is better practice for writing for a magazine.
The issue of payment is trickier. On the one hand, the case for unpaid internships implicitly hurting less fortunate students seems air-tight. But it's not the responsibility or the interest of businesses like magazines and non-profits who operate on slim budgets and narrow margins to design an internship that can accomodate even the least fortunate. One solution could be for colleges to expand their acceptance of accredited internships or financial compensation for them. A summer at a non-profit think tank in DC is an education in policy, politics and the serpentine navigation of Senate offices. If colleges want to give all their students a leg up in the post-grad world where internships are a requisite, why not step up their internship financing and accreditation? It's one thing to lament that fact that most internships don't pay. But it's just wrong for anybody, especially colleges, to pretend they don't pay off.
Generally, I don't think poorer students are the worse-off for being unable to experience unpaid internships. As mentioned above, unpaid internships are frequently created by organizations with limited budgets (non-profits, magazines, art galleries, museums etc.). If an organization can't afford to pay interns, they probably can't afford to pay their employees. This should be clear red flag to students that they are pursuing a bad career option. If you need money, you shouldn't be working at these institutions to begin with. Rich kids are the only ones willing to take these jobs because for them, work isn't about a paycheck. It's a status thing. They want jobs that are fun, prestigious, and stimulating. They'll get subsidized by their parents regardless. But those that need a paycheck to survive shouldn't even consider working at a fashion magazine, art gallery, or magazine-- you'll get paid pennies even if they are willing to hire you after graduation.
So what you're saying is these people, who need a paycheck, should seek out obnoxiously prestigious professions (such as medicine and law) or A.A/A.S. careers (turf management, electrical engineering)? Wow, you lack any sense of scope.
I say that as an intern myself, just in the middle of his first day at a recording studio. The only recording or post production studio I can think of that offers a paid internship is the studio for NPR's This American Life, and it's less an internship and more a temporary job (since you are basically working 50-60 hours a week on a $3000 monthly stipend in NYC). While the audio engineering industry has been in decline, paying interns prolly wasn't in the cards in the first place, even in prestigious places such as Avatar Studios or Electric Ladyland. And it's not because they're too poor to pay their employees: It's just because interns, when not assisting in sessions, are basically receptionists and errand runners.
But, more importantly, I think I should note that, though I have enough money to get by, and work another job to pay bills and such, I am not exactly rich. But I still do this because I want to be a music engineer, regardless of the paycheck. I have a friend who is in radio broadcasting, and she gets paid shit in her salary, enough that she has to work at a coffee shop to cover her expenses. But she still does it because she loves being in radio. And the same could apply to those less fortunate who want to be in fashion magazines, art galleries, or print publications...they don't intern or do unpaid articles because of the paycheck but for the love.
And it's not because they're too poor to pay their employees: It's just because interns, when not assisting in sessions, are basically receptionists and errand runners.
Out here in the real world, receptionists and errand runners get paid
I'm going to call bs on the doublespeak: unpaid internships give rich kids a leg up, yet they also handicap them by not teaching them the lessons of obligation? You can't have it both ways. Both sides gain value from such an arrangement. I don't see the issue.
How can there be an oversupply of people willing to work for low wages? What's really happening is the market-clearing wage is ZERO, which suppresses the extraordinary demand for these internships.
Illegal immigrants make a perfectly rational choice and are nothing like unpaid interns; they're seeking much higher wages relative to what they can earn in their home countries. American college students might want to reflect on that.
Completely agree with your conclusion
How can there be an oversupply of people willing to work for low wages? What's really happening is the market-clearing wage is ZERO, which suppresses the extraordinary demand for these internships.
What happens is that these industries contain the sort of job titles people want say out loud at parties (magazine, radio, TV, etc.) and many young people desperately want one of those titles to help their sex life.
Individual companies take advantage of this by making the entry level jobs unpaid internships, which for the most part only the children of the wealthy can afford to accept. People who have done the internship have a big advantage over the people who haven't at better jobs in these industries.
So if you want to work in that industry and have a great sex life like every young person does, it helps an awful lot to have wealthy parents. And you'll find that these companies are full of trust fund kids who went to all the right schools and have all the right connections.
So if you want to work in that industry and have a great sex life like every young person does, it helps an awful lot to have wealthy parents. And you'll find that these companies are full of trust fund kids who went to all the right schools and have all the right connections.
So unpaid internships are destroying America because it helps rich kids get laid? :)
Can someone identify the types of companies that "hire" lots of unpaid interns BESIDES entertainment/communications companies with failing business models (i.e. radio, music, movies, newspaper, TV*)? I can't think of any. Which is not surprising because most companies in these particular industries can barely pay their paid staff at the moment (or their unionized benefits).
And if that's the case, how is this destroying America and not just hastening the death of newspapers?
*Although television has a sustainable business model at the moment, Hulu, Youtube, and Tivo have fundamentally changed the market.
Like acting and writing, perhaps there are just more people who want to do these jobs than there will ever be paying positions for? What, in the long run, could you possibly do about that?
Are you sure you're not thinking of swallows at Capistrano? It's been a while since I last visited the mission but I'm fairly certain it was conspicuously free of a good fishing river. Or am I missing the joke?
Thanks Colin. Just added the link. I should learn to stop making movie references without pointing to the actual reference. Updated!
Joke comprehensively missed - but you can hardly be held responsible for my limited knowledge of movies of the last 20 years or so.
Unpaid internships are often unfair and illegal (see the Fair Labor Standards Act).
The short explanation: if you're contributing to a company, you deserve a salary. Call it an internship, a job, a contract, an assignment - it's all the same. If your internship is actually an apprenticeship where you're a drain on a company that goes out of its way to train you, it's legal.
Yes, interns gain valuable experience. But aren't all employees benefiting from their work experience? It leads to improved productivity, pay increases and promotions. Entry-level employees already receive a lower, entry-level salary for their lower productivity.
This illustrates well the collective action problem: some time ago you could get a job out of school, then to get a leg up, you would do an internships, then everybody does and you need two to get ahead, then everybody has two... This is where we are now. There is a law against it. It is just ignored because graduate students have little power in the job market and their internships are just a transition.
More questions are addressed at UnfairInternships.com. Thanks for talking about the issue.
I agree with ExIntern, if a student is doing work to contribute to a company, no matter how menial the task is, why shouldn't he or she be paid for it? Companies and colleges claim that the primary compensation is "experience", but all jobs deliver "experience" in addition to pay, so why should internships be any different?
I wouldn't be as angry over the situation if it wasn't for so many companies that cheerfully advertise that they offer/require "credit" for your internship.. as if they're generously doing me a favor. Credits aren't free. What that means to me, the student intern, is that I then have to register for some 2-3 unit course at my university, at several hundred dollars per unit to work as an intern. It's bad enough to be an unpaid intern, but when you require "credit", you're forcing me to PAY (over a thousand dollars for those 2-3 units) to work, and to become an in-debt intern. How absurd is that?
This should read "The case against Unpaid internships is long and with much merit."
What has been striking to me in the last year or so is the demand for even fairly poor quality internships. My girlfriend has been working in various production jobs in the art industry for many years. The jobs were never particularly high paying, but she also never had a problem getting one. Lately though, the types of jobs that used to pay are now asking for (and getting) unpaid interns. Many times they are asking for people who already have 2-3 years in the industry, and are for new companies that are not established and aren't exactly prestigious. Yet they still seem to get hundreds of applications for every Craigslist posting for the unpaid position.
I always find internships funny, it is a great way to get experience if you can afford it. If you can't, you have to find an employer willing to pay minimum wage. Working in research science setting, I can tell you poor students are screwed.
There are few a stipend positions, but why pay anything when you can get free work? Most poor students would be willing for less than minimum wage to get experience, but they need something.
But minimum wage is for the benefit of the poor - or is it to protect the children of the rich from competition? If it applied to internships, I be would be more inclined to believe the latter.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the issue of QUALITY (real and/or perceived).
Many students willing to work unpaid internships COULDN'T GET a paid one, whether because the primary factor was oversupply or low demand, the fact remains that given the supply/demand dynamics in their desired industry, many times they didn't have what it took to get a paid gig. Having been on both sides of that line, I can personally attest that this is sometimes (if not often) the case.
Unpaid political internships are clearly a way for rich kids to get a start on "access" in Washington in order to start a career in politics or lobbying. This is something that should not be allowed.
Why do an unpaid internship? Mainly because you want the prestige of a brand name company on your resume and you can't get a PAID internship. I don't know about the sex part of it, but food usually comes before sex for the people I've hired. People more interested in sex than working are likely to do very, very badly in the hard times ahead. These internship gigs are mainly for kids who are too lazy to get a real job, with real accountability and who have enough money not to worry about a paycheck and accountability. Everything is "fun" to these people because they don't really need a job.
My experience is that these are the people in the office who appear to have all the right credentials, present themselves well but never actually contribute to the company's success because they have never actually had a real unpleasant job before (i.e. dishwasher, waiter, etc.). They are entitled people who will find their place in life as middle management at mediocre, slow growing companies big enough for them to hide from any real responsibility. Generally, they won't do work "beneath" them.
I've hired sales people and an engineer trainee as unpaid "interns", but only for a very short period of time. Their first paycheck would happen when they sold something and (in the engineer trainee case) paid their own transport from Germany and application fees for their work visa and accomplished something measurable and valuable. Both were outstanding and productive employees and they started collecting a paycheck within 30 days of showing up. If they hadn't become productive, I would have told them to "hit the bricks" because they would be distracting to the productive people at the company trying to get something done.
Intentionally not paying people because you can get away with it is dishonest and another kind of slavery. Then again, the communists found out that when you "lie about paying workers, the workers lie about working."
In my business (software) interns are usually paid. But we lose money on every internship, and we would still lose money if we didn't pay them. They don't know what they're doing. They waste the time of more experienced people who have to answer their questions and rework what they've done. Long before they become net contributors they're gone.
We hire them to establish a relationship - so we know what kind of work habits and attitude they have. So we'll have a few fresh graduates we know who will want to work for us after they finish school. Good software people are difficult to find, even during bad times.
But I can't imagine why industries like radio would actually pay interns. Radio interns, I suspect, have all the same drawbacks as the software interns, and the world is full of enthusiastic kids who want to be in that business - how hard is it to find good people after they graduate?
I find it funny, ironic and sad that the Atlantic might be a part of the "Destruction of America" as Mr. Thompson puts it. The Atlantic currently offers 6-month unpaid internships to aspiring journalists. As a recent graduate of journalism school I would have loved the opportunity to work at the Atlantic/National Journal Group. But I'm not rich or have parents willing or able to support me for 6 months.