While internships have become an increasingly critical component for a successful career path after graduation, those that are unpaid have gained national attention because of legal and practical issues for financially-strapped students.

Unpaid internships have gained momentum nationally, due in part to the Fair Pay Campaign, an organization advocating for fair compensation and educational outcomes in internships.

“We’re opposed to unpaid internships because they’re only open to those who can afford to work for free,” said Mikey Franklin, founder and executive director of the Fair Pay Campaign.

Franklin said the FPC is “anti-unpaid internship, not anti-internship” because the competition for positions is no longer about talent and dedication, but parental wealth.

Legal issues also arise when unpaid internships at for-profit, private companies border on being illegal, Franklin said.

To be considered legal, the internship must fall within the guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Labor in April 2010 titled “Fact Sheet #71” under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The internship must be academic in nature, for the intern’s benefit and the intern should not displace an employee. Unpaid internships taken for academic credit remain legal.

FPC has taken steps to further interns’ knowledge of their rights within the workplace with the launch of a new website “ismyinternshiplegal.com” this month.

A recent campaign the FPC conducted with students successfully stopped the posting of ads for unpaid internships by the New York University Career Center. Columbia University also recently announced academic credit would no longer be given for unpaid internships.

“That does an enormous amount to help their students and [shows] companies that they can’t get away with exploiting students for cheap and free labor,” Franklin said.

At the University of Wisconsin, however, career advisers like Pam Garcia-Rivera say for some students, unpaid internships can still be valuable and give them a path into the professional world. Garcia-Rivera is the career adviser for media, information and communications at the UW College of Letters and Science.

David Nelson, director of alumni professional networks at the Wisconsin Alumni Association, said students need to create a “bridge from academic to professional success.”

Many students, especially in the realm of media and communications, are expected to build this bridge for free, so to offset those costs, UW offers scholarships for those who might not otherwise be able to have that experience, Garcia-Rivera said.

“In the school of journalism, we have a scholarship for summer internships,” Garcia-Rivera said. “If a student wants to do an internship where it may be unpaid, and they also have to get credit, they can apply.”

Other departments also host their own scholarships. Nelson said the political science department received $150,000 this year to create more scholarships for internships.

Nelson said that good internship opportunities with pay do exist, but students should avoid limiting themselves to positions with ‘intern’ in the title. Volunteer opportunities, leadership activities through the community and campus, part-time jobs and involvement in organizations can all fill the same role as an internship, he said.

“Think of an internship as any time you’re able to experiment in a field, to learn about that field to refine your professional skills and to make contact,” Nelson said. “Whether or not someone calls it an internship doesn’t really matter.”