I have been thinking for some time about the issue of unpaid
internships for college students.
Initially, I was for them as they seemed to do exactly what they purport
to do: provide some real-world work experience for kids who no longer have summer jobs, after-school jobs, part-time jobs, work-study jobs, co-op
jobs or any of the mechanisms by which people of my generation acquired work
experience. We, ummm, worked.
But as the internship concept expanded and they became essential
for college students to be eligible for real post-graduation jobs, I got the unsettling feeling that companies were exploiting internships to
acquire free workers. I won’t call them
employees because you’re only employed if you are paid.
In today’s Wall Street
Journal, a young, eager new college graduate defends the internship system
because it’s how she gained valuable knowledge about the work world—even though
she interned for a House committee in the decidedly un-real world of Washington DC. In “Summer
Interns Don’t Need ‘Intern Advocates,’” Kate Batchelder makes a good case
for internships as she understands their advantages. The article is well written and she makes her
case well. The problem is that she—necessarily—sees
the internship system only from the student’s perspective, and unclearly at
that.
From the organization’s side, the advantages are very clear:
you get a cadre of young and enthusiastic people to do grunt work for
free. And it gets even better: they also
subsidize you.
They
don’t add to the organization’s cost of benefits because they don’t receive
any. They (or, more accurately, their
parents) pay for their own medical and dental costs. Interns also don’t increase training costs
because they don’t participate in training programs. The department managers are supposed to train
them. In my experience, sometimes managers
do a good job of teaching the intern and sometimes they basically ignore him or
her.
Unpaid interns not only do the work for free, they pay for the
privilege by covering their own commuting costs, whether by train, car, or
public transit. They must buy their own gas,
pay their own tolls and parking, purchase their own transit tickets. They also pay for coffee, lunches, etc. and build up a work wardrobe. Companies typically don’t cover those costs
for employees, of course, so it’s a wash for them but the interns must spend
money to work for free. Sweet deal, huh?
This kind of training on the job used to be called indentured servitude. Indentured servants lived with and learned
from a master until skilled enough to produce his masterpiece and go out on his
own as a master craftsman. That means even
indentured servants received room and board.
Hmm.
Wait, it gets worse.
In some highly desired industries, the interns (or their
parents) pay
the company for the internship. That’s
right; these shameless organizations demand money for the right to do their work
for free. There’s even a placement
company—University
of Dreams—that charges students (or their parents) from $5,000 to $10,000
to “place” them in internships in certain industries, cities, and companies. Now that’s a sweet deal for any
organization. A company called International Internships
has the tagline: “Work the planet.” I
guess it’s better than working the streets.
@WSJ's Ms. Batchelder argues that the primary value of an
internship is to “help students land a job when 80% of hires happen through networking.” But how does she think students land the
internships in the first place? “Most
companies and organizations are careful to make sure that internships go to people
from diverse backgrounds—providing networking opportunities that were once
available strictly to the offspring of the well-connected.”
Ain’t innocence sweet?
Most internships go to the children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and
other family members of the organization’s employees, particularly the management
team. It’s an organizational legacy
system. Networking starts early. That also means the students who can't afford to work for free are excluded from the process.
While all of this strikes me as both immoral and
unconscionable, Ms. Batcheler says it’s all worth it because internships help
students land a job after graduation. Yet
she is a recent graduate with three internships under her belt, including one “fantastically
rewarding” one, but no job. So does that
really work?
According to a recent article in @TheAtlantic by Jordan Weissmann, “Do
Unpaid Internships Lead to Jobs? Not for College Students,” the data say
no. Mr. Weissmann quotes several studies
that show “unpaid interns fared roughly the same or worse on the job market
compared to non-interns across a variety of fields . . .”
 |
| Dr. Intern |
Why? After exploring factors such as different majors and GPA scores, Mr. Weismann
finds this “a bit of a mystery” but I think the two answers are obvious.
- First, organizations use unpaid internships to avoid hiring entry-level employees. That means fewer entry-level jobs are available for new graduates.
- Second, unpaid interns have demonstrated their willingness to work for nothing. That just may indicate to hiring companies that the work they were doing had no value. After all, the idea is that you get paid what you’re worth--thus that you’re only worth what you’re paid.
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