To be Paid, or to be Unpaid?

Writer (Skyler): Internships offer a valuable learning experience for anyone who is able to snare one. However, most internships require hours that are that of a normal job, Monday-Friday, 9-5. While this schedule shows how rigorous and demanding a regular job can be, this leaves no time for someone with an unpaid internship to work at all to make some sort of money to support themselves during said internship. This is where the problem arises. It is unethical and a little farfetched to expect a student or anyone to work that amount of hours with no money to pay bills, put gas in their car, or even eat. I understand the sentiment behind the unpaid internship; it is a learning experience, yada yada yada. But Kamenetz in “Take This Internship and Shove It” writes it best when she says “getting hired and getting paid are what work, in the real world, is all about.” 

Let’s face it; money has always been an incentive, and it will continue to be so years from now. If anything, being in a paid internship will make the students work harder, because they know the money they earn is from their own hard work and goes toward their continual survival in a world where expenses add up. Also, the students who take out loans to live comfortably while working an unpaid internship are setting up bad habits. Unpaid internships are giving them the impression that, if they get a low paying job, they will have some form of monetary back-up plan that they can fall back on, when this is often not the case. Unpaid internships are based on the illusion that students can better prepare themselves for a real job, but the only way to do this is to treat an internship like it is a real job. If anything, unpaid internships let companies get work for free. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported for the class of 2013 that “63.1 percent of paid interns received at least one job offer. In comparison, only 37 percent of unpaid interns got an offer.” Also, paid interns made more in starting salaries than those who had unpaid internships. The logic is simple; paid internships offer more opportunities than unpaid internships.

Works Cited

"Class of 2013: Paid Interns Outpace Unpaid Peers in Job Offers, Salaries." Class of 2013: Paid Interns Outpace Unpaid Peers in Job Offers, Salaries. N.p., 29 May 2013. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.


Are Unpaid Internships Worth It?

Response Writer: Timothy Carter

In order to secure employment within a reputable organization, Work experience or internships are established pre-requisites. However, some of these internships are unpaid, particularly in the industries of fashion and media. For students, is an unpaid internship a valuable opportunity? Or, is it a waste of the student’s summer and time that could be better used generating some much needed income to support him/her? The benefits of an unpaid internship are invaluable. Working any internship offers students real-world experience, evidence of their future job-worthiness, and contacts in their field of interest.

 

Students may find that sometimes the internship that is most in line with their career goals is unpaid. Surprisingly, there are many benefits to working an unpaid internship:

1.       Unpaid internships offer more flexibility. This allows students to formulate their own learning goals that align with their career objectives.

2.       Unpaid internships can be more convenient to a student’s class schedule or offer a shorter commute. 

3.       Unpaid internships offer the same kinds of networking and learning opportunities as paid internships. 

4.       They also give students the opportunity to prove their dedication and enthusiasm for their internship, which makes a positive impression on employers.