The number of available unpaid internships has rapidly grown, causing officials to question how beneficial the training is to those involved. The New York Times reported that 643 unpaid internships were posted on Stanford University’s job board this year. Two years ago, that number was 174. Experts estimate that, nationally, 25 to 50 percent of the hundreds of thousands of internships are unpaid.

As a result of this growing trend, some interns find themselves scrubbing door handles or shipping boxes instead of doing the work they originally were hired to do. Because some interns are reluctant to report any poor treatment they might encounter, it has caused government officials to order investigations into several firms’ internship programs. Federal legal criteria dictates that unpaid interns should receive valuable training and that the employer shouldn’t derive any “immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities. Employers that take advantage of unpaid interns and violate such criteria soon might pay the price.

This growth of and loose grip on internships calls for increased local supervision and stricter criteria for employers to follow while dealing with interns. Universities should be keeping a closer eye on what type of internships for which their students are applying and receiving. For example, if an institution kept better tabs on an unpaid intern’s educational progression, it would ensure that students benefit from the internship.

With a university filtering wrong internships from right, students will be less susceptible to falling into unpaid, labor-intensive traps. However, it is the ultimate decision of the intern about whether having that big name on a résumé is worth the time and, sometimes, wasted effort. For some, washing bathrooms might equal the value of having an impressive-looking résumé.

What the government might be calling illegal, the intern might call agreeable and wouldn’t want to see their internship end. Tighter laws should be used to divide the line of companies taking advantage of interns and those interns benefiting, without pay. There needs to be stronger benchmarks for employers to follow before advertising an internship. Introduction of new laws also could act as a filter for internships, causing companies to either fulfill their responsibilities to the interns or stop offering the training altogether.

Although we do not believe unpaid internships should be eliminated, there needs to be a change. With businesses taking advantage of the amount of people looking for internships, more surveillance and less haphazardness is needed. As government officials move forward with their investigations, we hope they are able to develop tighter laws to more strictly govern those who offer the internships.