Opinion
Unpaid interns slaves to system
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For the liberal arts major, internships are the cornerstone of college life. Few of us would easily be able to find jobs without internships or a more specialized graduate school curriculum. For my major, political science, the benefit from an internship is prestige. As the theory goes, you meet the right people and gain the right connections which will eventually lead to a career of your dreams.
Students are noticing the importance of internships in increasing numbers. A survey by MonsterTrak.com found that 78 percent of undergraduates currently enrolled plan to complete an internship for pay or school credit before graduation.
Since political offices and nonprofit organizations are always very short of funds, they don’t feel obligated to squeeze out a few bucks for struggling interns. But since political science majors are so plentiful relative to job opportunities, fierce competition for jobs after graduation practically requires a willingness to do mind-numbing work for free. Yet, in business and medical sectors, very few internships are unpaid.
This is a reality of the labor market today, but this state of affairs creates tremendous inequality of opportunity. Only those students with a form of external support such as parents or student loans can afford to take on an unpaid internship, especially one in another city with very high costs of living.
Since there are only so many hours in a day, very few students can successfully manage a job that will pay all the bills, an unpaid internship or two, a full course load and still make it out of the semester alive. Thus, those students without substantial financial support will have to gravitate toward those careers with high demand for workers and internships that pay a decent salary.
The path to getting a decent internship is increasingly a vicious circle. You have to have had internships on your résumé to be able to get one. If you’ve had to work for your money as a waiter every summer out of necessity, you’re never going to stand out of the crowd that applies for the most competitive internships. While it’s disconcerting to think about in what is supposedly a meritocratic country, the majority of those who end up getting the most competitive internships may not have even been the most qualified, but those with the best insider connections who pulled a few strings.
Employers presumably love unpaid internships. They don’t have to pay their interns, the interns finish tedious unskilled work that no one else wants to do, and the interns get real-world experience and connections they will need for the labor market. So everyone wins, right?
Not quite. The reality of the work environment at most unpaid internships provides an incentive to slack off. A 1998 survey also found that internship quality is correlated with whether it pays or not. It makes sense: Why should I put my heart into work I’m not even being paid for? In addition, the work interns are assigned to do is often not a good reflection of what workers in that sector of the labor force do on a daily basis. Just because you’ve mastered data entry in Excel does not mean you’ve learned good interpersonal skills or the ability to multitask.
Unpaid internships may sound beneficial in theory or at worst harmless, but in practice they devalue members of the labor force. They create an underclass of students who are not subject to minimum wage laws and who actually consider themselves lucky for the opportunity to work for free.
This underclass loses the ability to break even financially during the summer, much less come out ahead with savings. Sometimes students can manage to get college credit for unpaid internships, but often they are completely uncompensated.
What sounds like a fantastic summer of research and analysis when you’re applying can easily turn into a never-ending, tedious project consisting of transcribing, summarizing and periodic coffee-fetching. As important as this work might be for the organization, you never get the kind of respect and appreciation that you would doing more visible and skilled labor.
It’s very important for prospective interns to know exactly what projects they will be doing in the unpaid internship and what skills they can expect to gain. While it’s unlikely that employers will look beyond their bottom line and stop offering unpaid, unfulfilling internships, they should consider the probable effects on their work force. Even if they don’t care that their interns are struggling to make ends meet, they should care about the quality of work they are likely to deliver.
Ryan Greenfield (rgreenfield@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in political science and economics.
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Well, I’m sure a sweatshop in Korea is hiring right now…
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There’s a word for you complaining, unpaid interns that starts with “b” and ends with “ch”… That’s right… Bunch. As in, bunch of subversive, uppity anti-Americans! The sooner you get it through your thick skull that you are NOT entitled to a share of the produce of your own labor so as to be yourself tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged (no matter what that damned dirty communist Adam Smith might say), the sooner you can quit whining to the liberal media and get back to making me coffee! - Germain Q. Stemme
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Looks like it’s easier if you’re rich.
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Fantastic critique of a VERY frustrating system.
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waa waa how oppressive….yawn.
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Did I miss the point of this column? You might as well be complaining that it tends to be cold when it snows.
You’re not a bad writer, and it’s an interesting topic, but proposing a solution rather than simply listing the problems might get you ahead in life, or maybe even an internship this summer …
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This begs the question…are columnists slaves to the Badger Herald? - Germain E. Stemme
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Korean workforce < American workforce < European workforce.
I’d rather pay more in taxes and have more vacation time. Suckers.
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Ironic that it is the liberal arts major which is subjected to intern slavery.
Accounting interns can actually make more per month than the first year auditors.
HA - HA
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Congratulations for addressing this overlooked issue. It’s all too often forgotten by the media, maybe in part because so many use unfair internships to complement their workforce.
I have started a blog on this very topic: www.unfairinternships.com. I just posted about your editorial. We need to turn up the heat on those companies who are breaking the law and encourage students to turn down those unfair internships.
One detail about your article: characterizing internships as being mind-numbing misses the point that they are free labor filling actual jobs. This is the real scandal that needs to be discussed.
Once again, congratulations for bringing up the issue.
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check out internshipratings.com for information on internships and what they are REALLY like!
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I’m pretty sure that Adam Smith wasn’t a “damned dirty communist.” I think he was the guy who THOUGHT OF CAPITALISM.
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Yes! Thank you for posting about such an important issue. Internships sound great in theory but in practice are very competitive to get, very expensive to do, and even once you are in the office, there is no guarantee you will get the experience you had hoped for or any chance to prove your capability. Its a shame that important fields like politics and journalism are being hijacked by such poor hiring practices.