Unpaid internships for class credit unethical, unfair to students

hahaha..

UGH I completely agree….. my unpaid internship at the Michigan Senate was a huge pain because I had to take out a loan to cover my living expenses that summer. However, they liked my work hired me to fundraise for them and to do projects in the office on state time, and I can hopefully use the new netowrk to my advantage in order to get a full-time job next year. Also, there are so many other financial opportunities for students in this situation (that I chose not to take advantage of). There are tons of scholarships for students specifically taking internships for college credit. Another big one would be, hmmm, paid internships….. they’re not all unpaid…

You said it DUDE! I sure would like to see other stories here about student’s internships.

Finally someone is shedding some light onto this shady operation. As a telecommunication major I was told that the best way for me to get my foot in the door was to take an internship, so I began looking for one a year before I knew I wanted to take it. Any “paid” internship that I could find came with HUGE competition, and 90% of the time was no ware near this state. What made things ultimately worse was the fact that the “paid” internships never paid enough to cover your expenses, leaving you to fill in the gaps with scholarships, (also highly competitive) and loans. Eventually I settled on a local place that offered partial credit reimbursement and more importantly the prospect of hands on training. My internship at Such Video did not turn out as great as I had hoped it would though. Most of my time was spent doing office chores, filling up candy jars for customers, making sure the printer had paper, and other times my job included household type chores, such as doing the dishes after lunch, de-frosting the freezer and on one occasion weeding the front flower bed that the city and let get out of hand. The reason they had let it go though was because they were replacing the Old-Town Bridge and the road in front of the building. I for one thought the mounds of dirt, and cement might be a much larger eye sore then some weeds around their lone sidewalk tree. When I was doing anything in the office that resembled media work it was usually erasing flaws on CD labels before they were shipped to people who would maybe look at the content once before throwing the CD away. On the few occasions that I was able to go do field work it was usually just to help lug equipment around, though once I got to hold a boom mic, and on another occasion went with one of the editors who usually didn’t go out and shoot and he let me set stuff up and told me how to operate that specific camera. In fact the guys who were doing the in house work were always really nice to me, and seemed generally interested in showing me what the could but I was never given time to sit in with them as they edited. I did learn something from my experience though; I am no good at transcribing. During the last part of my internship they had me transcribe a few hours of video and it took me longer then they thought it should. Between the berating for having the transcribing cut into regular office chores they would remind me of how I would need to come back in after the internship was finished in order to finish the transcribe if I didn’t get it done. Finally as a last little kick to the side during my last day I received a check for my “partial credit” reimbursement, and learned that they really did mean partial credit, as in I was partially reimbursed for 1 of the 6 credits that I took for working there 3 days a week for about 4 months.

Now that I am older and can look back at it I know that most of it was my fault for letting them take advantage of me, I should have told MSU after week 3 that it wasn’t working out and that the internship was pointless, but I was scared to tell them for a few reasons.
A. I was living off of the loan I got from taking the credits; I thought that if I canceled the credits I would have to give back the money.
B. I kept hoping the internship would turn around, and I would learn something.
C. At the end I thought that if I told MSU that my internship was pointless that some good may come of it, but that I might also lose the credits I had paid for.
Now of coarse I know that none of that would have happened, but it’s not like undergrads are told all of their options, as it was pointed out, MSU gets money for nothing for these internships, so why would they complain?

Also would like to point out that I don’t work for any video production company and that my Internship with Such Video did not produce any networking for me, nor do I use my internship on my resume.

I have to apologies for the spelling and grammar errors in my above post. If you can’t tell already I get a little hot under the collar when describing my internship experience. This leads to some hasty typing and spelling which kills my already inadequate skills in grammar and spelling.

The author can complain all you want about being exploited by this alleged injustice. However, what he fails to consider is that no one forces you to take an unpaid internship. I turned down several unpaid internships and eventually took on an internship that paid well and led to me being published in two national scholarly journals. That being said, these students complaining about unpaid internships need to take the initiative to find one that pays them for their time, rather than complain about being “required” to do an internship. I suppose what I am really trying to articulate is that you make the choice to take the unpaid internship, no one else makes that choice for you. If you choose to work for free, you are part of the so called “problem”.

The thing that bugs me the most is not the unpaid part, because many internships can be good experience and can help you get a job in the long run, but more the paying the university for the credits. In the case of my unpaid internship last summer I worked in the office for 250+ hours for a government agency, sent weekly ‘journals’ to my internship supervisor, in addition to an objective statement, final paper, etc. Now I was perfectly fine with doing the internship for just the experience, however I was also given the opportunity to pay the university for the credits, which as we all know are not cheap. I mean for the university it’s a win-win they get paid while expending the least possible resources. Maybe it would have felt worth the money for the credits if the university had done something for me other than just adding a number to my credit tally. I understand the university needs a way to make sure an internship is legitimate and needs money for a supervisor, etc. but if I am basically paying for a class I would like a little more than some guy putting a check mark on the work I send him and then entering a ‘P’ next to my name if I do more than 3/4 of it.

Alum, if you don’t mind me asking, what did you get your degree in? Perhaps some disciplines have more paid internships then others? After all, I know that the media field is full of un-paid internships, too many of them in fact, and considering who wrote this article, it looks like the legal field also has a few too many, but perhaps yours is better? Also do you currently work for an organization the “employees” some free college help from time to time? I’m sure any business that does that is going to love to throw it back in the students’ faces. It seems to me like the internships are a lot like working before there were labor unions, if you don’t like it, tough, there are a bunch of other people who would love to take the job. I wish I had let them have my internship…

I had several paid internships during my time at MSU. I was a mechanical engineering major and all of my friends in engineering got paid interships. I have also been employed at two different companies and they pay their interns well for the work they do. I was shocked to find out when I was in college that other disciplines can get away with not paying these students for their work. I fully agree that you should be compensated for the work you do as an intern without having to take a second job, a student loan or fighting for a scholarship.

I do think however that the blame must be shared between the student and the employer. The student did take the job that paid little or nothing so they are not fully off the hook for their situation.

For some fields, paid internships are either incredibly competitive and only pay a pittance, or they aren’t paid at all. I would have killed for a paid internship (I was an Int’l Relations student) and I kept putting it off, hoping a paid one would crop up. I finally took an unpaid one that left me 3k in debt. The experience was tremendous, but it is a cost I am STILL paying, thanks to the loans I took out. And as I said, paid ones for some disciplines offer little money and expect students to live in New York or DC, both very pricey cities.

Nate C. I graduated from James Madison (PTCD) and I shopped around before I found an internship writing policy arguments for an agricultural commodity group. Funny you say that there are a lot of unpaid internships in the course of a legal education, as that is what I am doing now. I am in my third year of law school and there are unpaid internships that people fight over because of the experience. But there are also a ton of paid positions. So the advice I have for everyone who is here complaining, make the choice to find a paid internship.
JMC ALUM 2008, the experience will pay for itself if you follow up on it.

To “2004 Alum”: While it is great to have received a paid internship, the article focuses on the issue of the university charging tuition for your work… Paid or unpaid doesn’t seem to matter (although unpaid seems exponentially worse). Did you have to pay the university for the internship? I suspect you did and therein lies the rub… The school gets to charge major credit hour dollars for something they provide no services for.

I would just like to add that often times it is not “free labor” to mentor someone in an internship. The time spent teaching, training, mentoring, being there to answer questions, and often times having to go back to make sure things are correct take more time and money than it would be to have a more experienced person do the work-both in man hours and consumables. Im not saying this is the case in all fields or in all disciplines, but a quality internship that is unpaid is actually costing those that provide it. And not everyone that does an internship is hardworking or does quality work so it is a gamble to invest that time and money into an intern. Free isnt always free, and there are companies/labs/fields that offer internships truly to help give students experiences that they otherwise wouldnt have to make them more competitive in their fields later. Search out these experiences even if it’s “free labor”.

Tony, I did not pay the university for any internship. You pay the university for six credits of class time you do not have to go to. I wrote a paper that ended up getting published and resulted in me getting a job. I completely agree with the previous posting by Not Free. I bugged my advisor about every other day for help on my publication and other issues which my advisor went out of his way to help me on. Your argument that they provide no services for is completely rediculous. I cannot speek for how any other college’s internships work. At JMC, however, we got credit for our internships. I got as much direction and services as I wanted. If anything I got more than I paid for.

See…I get so worked up about people complaining that they are being exploited my grammer goes out the window…
This is what I meant

“Your argument that they provide no services is completely rediculous. I cannot speak for how any other college’s internships work. At JMC, however, we got credit for our internships. I got as much direction and services as I wanted. If anything I got more than I paid for.”

“You pay the university for six credits of class time you do not have to go to.”

So that means you had to pay money for no services rendered by the school… You are giving them free money!

I have to agree with the article. I was a zoology major, and I spent hours researching places that would pay and i found out about 95% of them didn’t. The ones that did, were on the other side of the country and wouldn’t cover relocation expenses, making it pointless to move that far.

For those who said it is a choice to do an internship: it was a requirement in my field.

I have since changed my career field and I am working as a Medical Laboratory Technician. I am required to do a 24 week clinical rotation, which also requires 17 credit hours of classes. None of these have the offer of being paid. Any of us who are forced to work 40 hours a week would even kill to be paid minimum wage.

@ those who are indicating that it is the student’s choice to take an unpaid internship. You are right, it is a choice. However, it’s often a choice between taking an unpaid internship or not graduating at all.

I think that this argument is just a symptom of the overarching problem – which is the belief that it is just and fair to hire a student to work for a company uncompensated. And beyond that, that it is just and fair to have the student actually put themselves further into debt for this ‘great opportunity,’ either through living expenses, through paying the university for credits, or both.

So it should not be a question of whether or not a student should choose an unpaid internship – there should not be unpaid internships to begin with!

Additionally, while someone above noted that the employer takes time to teach, mentor, and answer questions, it’s not as though the employer is receiving nothing in return. The company has another person working for them and for the company. Done right, the employer can certainly earn his time and money back – and then some – over the course of the internship. Perhaps even shape a future full-time employee.

Do you honestly believe that just because a person is a student and has not yet graduated that they aren’t providing any benefit to the employer whatsoever? Of course not! If you do believe that, you are contributing to the devaluation of yourself and your fellow students.

I applaud the author for shedding some light on this issue. Hopefully some change will come about from this.