WSJ reported a few years ago that some companies are **auctioning off** selected internships....parents bid to get their kids the slots, and the proceeds are donated by the company to a prep school with which the company has established a relationship.

This is a really, really bad idea, similar to the institution of purchasing one's commission as an officer, as it once existed in the British Army. The "purchase" element of unpaid internships is not quite as blatant as in the case where you have to explicitly pay to play, but it still discriminates in favor of kids of wealthy families and ignores raw talent.

Companies which the WSJ article mentioned as being involved in perpetrating this practice included Morgan Stanley, NBC, Miramax, WebMD, Electronic Arts, Style Magazine, and Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. Also, numerous "nonprofits" appear to be involved in this practice.

If you don't want to work for free, then... don't.

I recall that we were were not allowed to do internships at certain places (Texas Monthly) because our professor claimed that you'd "learn nothing;" they'd stick you in the back filing and not pay you. I was a mass communications major, and that was around '02-'03. We were required to attend a class in addition to the internship to get credit, but that was an anomoly within the university. There were internships even then that people were paying for, but those were mostly overseas.

I worked all through college. I don't know that "traditional" college students normally do that now. My internship at a magazine was only 5 or so hours a week, but I was also in school full time and working 25-plus hours a week- so it was hard. I think the only purpose behind requiring a student to work more than a few hours per week without compensation is keeping the poor kids (or the ones who are supporting themselves without scholarships or large amounts of financial aid) from graduating.

I'm divided on the "internship for credit" thing. Best case scenario, it gets students hands-on experience instead of a class that they might not get much out of. Worst case, it's SUCH a gimme for the school and (as ahw points out) a lot of internships are crap.

Oh, and I finished college in '06. Sadly, the expectation from a lot of employers these days is that college students enter the workforce with a variety of "internship experiences."

I was shocked at how many of my fellow students (or their parents) PAID for the "experience" of "interning abroad." Or in another state. As in pay a "program fee" + rent for an apartment to work in DC for a summer or for a few months after graduating.

I will say these kids got EXCELLENT experience. However, these excellent experiences are out of reach for the vast majority of students. Yet a lot of workplaces support it, both by using unpaid interns, and by expecting to see these kinds of internships on resumes.

Based on what I have seen, it is better to work at McDonalds than in most internships. Seriously.

Trust me, young people, helping Beatty prepare reports in the Marketing Department for a semester is waste of your time.

I did an internship back in 2000 as part of the requirement to graduate from my vocational training. I had to do 80 hours total. I put in 4 hours a day my last term which I could barely fit into my schedule with going to school and working at the same time. I was paid for my internship hours, but it was a pittance. I was paid $2.50 an hour by the company I interned for, which basically just covered my transportation costs. I don't think I actually gained anything from my experience as I was doing the exact same thing as I was in one of my classes already.

I don't think it's a problem to pay interns less than you would other new hires is a problem. Interns are only around for a brief period of time and are expensive from a managerial standpoint than other employees - they typically need more oversight, and you may need to coordinate with the school, and even though they're short term, you still need to do all of the employment paperwork. But they should get paid if they are doing real work.

We usually have at least a couple of interns working for us at any given time; this summer, we'll have 4 or 5 in our small office. Everyone gets paid (lowest is $10/hour for HS grads, the CS student from Stanford will get more than 2x that, with everyone else somewhere in between), everyone is expected to do real work, and work real hours. Done right, internships are good for the company (we get some much-needed help on various projects and the chance to scope out future employees) and for the students, who get to learn what is expected in the real world.

Agree about the mentoring, Amy. That should always be part of the deal. I think it's really important to help the young people we work with learn about our industry and themselves, and how to achieve their goals.

We expect real work, and we pay real wages.

It takes a little extra supervision, but you get to find talent you might hire later. Even if that doesn't work out, I suspect a kid who got a fair deal from you might have a good word for your company as a place to work.

I believe most of these unpaid "internships" are probably violations of the labor law. Let's just say it wouldn't break my heart to see any of these abusers on the wrong end of a class action lawsuit.

Reading Mark Twain's account of Tom Sawyer painting the fence is a good way to understand the unpaid internship culture.

I loved that white washing scene in Tom Sawyer.

In fact I think I'll read that book to my kids when I go home.

Interesting perspective from Ms. Fischer.

I am unsure how the public colleges/universities specifically run these programs, but in the real world (ie- the private sector), the ability to prevent padlocks on private college doors requires said schools to employ a certain percentage of their graduates (industry standard: 65%)

As an example, as a Dean of a private college in Florida, I am overseeing a pace for us to hit 90% employment for our graduates this year, unheard of numbers in a good economy, nevermind the current one we are wobbling through now. Interestingly enough, roughly 50%+ of this job placement number does come from our externship program on campus, who normally hire our graduates before their scheduled rotation is complete.

The idea behind this is that our graduates can show well for practices looking to expand, or those looking to replace ineffective labor already available to them. Also, our Career Services department have contacts already from the networking they do about potential job openings, long before they hit the newspapers and job-bots on Monster.com, or some other such website.

Public colleges and universities, interesting enough, have no 65% requirement to employ their students, and estimates have placed their actual numbers somewhere between 10%-15% nationwide. Hence, "funding" is the primary goal of such internship/externship activity for the public sector colleges, not accountable performance or student service.

Such is life, no? ;-)

Ian

So.

Do I believe the resume, or hire the kid I know about?

Hmm.

My company just does paid internships (and pays pretty well). I was technically an intern when hired, mainly because I was set to graduate in a few months but that way I avoided the old process of being a temp for a short time before possibly being rolled over into full time.

Essentially they seem to use internships here as a way to have employees be a temp, without actually being a legal temp and the differences that causes wrt to paychecks, benefits, etc. Actual temps are (or were, maybe it's changed in the 13 years I've been here) actually employed by a temp agency then contracted over. There's a big difference in privileges they can get wrt to security accesses too. Most of the interns seem to be on a track to be hired here upon graduation at that point anyway.

I think it is disgusting for any organisations that can afford to pay but tried to exploit desperate jobseekers to work for free or work more for less.
In various parts of asia, it is quite normal for various asian employers to demand or expect or exploit their slave workers to work unneccessarily long hours or in unhygienic environment. In various parts os Asia, too many
employers do not have a good standard and do not follow good standards. They also tend to demotivate certain employees by excessive bullying and intimidation and tend to
tolerate employees who were not interested in their jobs or who have extremely bad attitude.
We have to be careful who we wish to do unpaid work for it would be horrible to do unpaid work for people who we have nothing in common with and who were only interested in oppressing us.
I think it should be up to individuals whether they want to do unpaid intership or whether it is worth doing it. Anyway, I think those organisation that can afford to pay for intership should pay and those that cannot afford to pay should at least try to provide a good basic start for their interns.

As a rule of thumb, the better internships, in terms of their career value, are compensated. They may not pay a market rate, but they'll pay enough to enable the intern to survive in the region of the assignment. That's because the organization wants the best people that they can get. If you aren't willing to pay anything, you're excluding a broad range of potential applications who can't afford to devote the time.

I think that certain companies use internships as status filters. They won't openly state that they want young people from upper middle class and wealthier backgrounds, so they use unpaid internships to do that for them. This is why they're so common in advertising and fashion, and other creative fields where social bona fides are important.

Unpaid internships at for-profit companies are basically illegal. There's minimum wage laws for a reason. The government just hasn't decided to actually crack down on it.

But once once the government figures out it can start fining companies for this and make A LOT of money, you can pretty much say good-bye to unpaid internships. And frankly as a small business owner in the entertainment industry, I don't think we can get rid of them fast enough.

I'm with Amy. Pay the people who work for you.

After being around the new interns (most started the beginning of the May...a few two weeks earlier) I wonder. Our interns are paid pretty well...I believe if you have completed your junior year you get 80% of a graduate.

This is what I am looking at. Employee A works with Intern B one week. Employee A spends 8 hours that week helping the intern. The intern B gets amount X of work done that week. Employee A could do that same work X in 4 hours. So the employer is spending 4 hours of Employee A plus whatever they pay intern B.