Unpaid Internships Exploited

Quickly becoming a staple of undergraduate college experiences are internships. At first blush, this is a good thing. It gets a student's feet wet in a career path they are interested in, and will have the skills to go into after graduation.

Not all internships are created equal though. In particular, some are paid, and others are not. You would think paid and unpaid ones to look different, and you are right.

There are problems in the differences though.

Moreover, there are problems with unpaid internships, as this New York Times article discusses. It should not be too surprising either. A for-profit company is still looking to make a profit, even when they offer internships.

In theory, an internship is an educational opportunity for a student. However, if a company is primarily worried about making a profit, what stops them from exploiting unpaid interns for labor? Interns have absolutely no experience or seniority, so they aren't likely to cry foul. Interns could jeopardize their entire career before it even starts by speaking up. Advantage: company, in a landslide. In fact, given the leverage companies have over interns, what's stopping a company from making interns do the jobs nobody else wants to do? It's not that far-fetched to see a board of directors incorporating unpaid internships into their business model.

Unpaid internships could easily be used by companies to increase profits. Anecdotal evidence screams loud and clear that it is happening too, and may have been accelerated by the slumped economy.

This is what happens when worlds collide. On one hand, we have colleges and universities concerned with giving their students an educational experience outside the classroom that helps them when they enter the "real world." On the other, we have future employers constantly looking for ways to increase their bottom line. Their motivations are not going to change, even when a university opens up their student body to them.

That's not to say that companies and university don't have some shared goals. There are benefits on a company's end to letting students get a taste of what working at their company is like. If all goes right, that student will be a more qualified employee when they hit the work force, and the student will  perhaps prefer to work for that company over others. In a perfect world, this is how internships work. They should benefit everyone involved.

However, a business is still a business, and it seems the invisible hand shoves unpaid interns towards menial tasks the company does not want to pay someone minimum wage to do. To me, the easiest solution is to only let organizations with non-profit status offer unpaid internships. It may not fix everything, but it would go a long way towards limiting the exploitation going on now.

It is disheartening how easily education gets tossed to the wayside sometimes.