Students choose between paid, unpaid internships

Many students, particularly upperclassmen, choose to enhance their college experience with internships to further their career. However, the question of taking a paid or unpaid internship often arises.\nKris Mathes, a promotions intern for Emmis Communications' WNOU 93.1 in Indianapolis, felt his unpaid internship was beneficial for his future career.\n"I feel it was worth my time simply because I now have my foot in the door of a major communications company," he said. "I've met so many people and networking will be critical when looking for a job when I graduate. Some of the people I met have numerous connections in other cities and with other companies, so I'm hoping they will recommend me based on the work I did for them this past summer."\nInternships allow for experiences unable to occur in the classroom, giving hands-on practice for students in their field of interest.\n"I definitely learned the promotions field in a sort of behind-the-scenes way," Mathes said. I saw promotion requests from beginning to end and learned how each department of the company works together to form the final result," he said.\nThe most important aspect of internships is the opportunity to gain experience and develop skills, Mark Brostoff, assistant director of undergraduate career services at the Kelley School of Business said.\nThe matter of undertaking a paid or unpaid internship also depends on the quality of the internship, said Marcia Debnam, internship and career director for the School of Journalism.\nThere are various reasons a company would not pay their interns, Debnam said. For example, some companies simply do not have the budget for it. Their operations rely on interns for productivity, as opposed to larger companies with much larger resources seeking to help the student, more than their company.\nFor those students leaning toward an unpaid internship, but worrying about \nfinances, Debnam suggests a part-time job to ease the financial strain of college life.\nSenior Kate Pardo, who interned for the U.S. Army Public Affairs as an assistant in Washington, D.C., found a way to reduce her financial stress. \n"My parents helped me financially, and I spent money that I had already saved for my entertainment and extraneous expenses," she said.\nTypically, certain fields offer certain types of internships, such as business internships, which -- more often than not -- pay their interns, Brostoff said. However, fields like broadcast news or print journalism often do not offer monetary compensation.\nBrostoff said there are psychological differences from the employer's standpoint when the intern is not receiving pay. It is more difficult to request longer hours or demand more from someone without paying the student, he said.\n"If anything, having an unpaid internship will prove to a potential employer the tremendous self-motivation it takes to not get paid for four months and how driven you are, rather than getting paid for your internship possibly because money was the motivator," Brostoff said.\nWhether paid or unpaid, Pardo feels the internships are necessary to a career.\n"I do think that they will look down upon applicants who do not have internship experience," she said.\n-- Contact staff writer Teri Rosenbaum at terosenb@indiana.edu.