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The Indiana Daily Student

Internship internment

Internship internment

It’s a scenario with which many of us are familiar.

You go to college because that’s how you get a job.

But hundreds of thousands of dollars and half a degree later, you’re told no, to get a job you have to go to college and get an internship.

All the internships you can find are unpaid. If you need the internship to count for college credit, you’re actually paying to work.

That is if you can afford it on top of existing college loans.

So if you can’t afford to pay to work in college, you’re deemed undeserving of work after you graduate.

That is the catch-22 many college students find themselves in, and it’s the reason interns across the country have been suing for pay.  

Internships are actually invaluable for job training.

Colleges don’t do it. Unless you’re in the business school, it’s likely you’ve only taken one “career development” class, which focused on how to get a job, not how to keep one.

And since employees no longer stay with one company for 50 years and then retire,
employers are reluctant to invest in training programs.

Why should they when you’ll take what you learned to a competitor in five years?

So unpaid internships emerged as a sort of happy medium — college students get job
training, and employers get free labor.

Everyone wins — except those students not privileged enough to be able to work for free.

In the current system, valuing internship experience in the hiring process often means valuing privilege.

Students who can afford to work for free have relevant experience and connections, while students who can’t afford it have a résumé full of food services and retail jobs that don’t seem to carry quite as much weight.

It seems unreasonable to expect low-income students to shoulder more debt and more responsibilities to get half as far as those who can rely on mom and dad to foot the bill.

Colleges and universities aren’t completely blameless.

Requiring more professional skills classes could help those who can’t afford internships get the training they need.

There are some scholarships available for students who otherwise couldn’t intern.

Expanding these, especially those offered through the University, would make graduates more impressive and improve the school’s reputation.

But employers must make changes, too.

The solution is simple: if a company can’t afford to pay its interns, or at least
subsidize their living costs, that company can’t afford to have an internship program.

Paying interns will probably save companies money in the long run if the trend of unpaid interns suing their employers continues.

The legal fees and ill repute aren’t worth it. Interns are working. You should pay them for it. After all, there’s a word for unpaid labor.

­— opinion@idsnews.com
Follow the Opinion Desk on Twitter @ids_opinion.

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