
Unpaid Internships: Bad for Students, Bad for Workers, Bad for Society - waxymonkeyfrog
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/unpaid-internships-bad-for-students-bad-for-workers-bad-for-society/256958/
======
phillmv
Do we have a good economic narrative for unpaid internships outside of
naturally abusive talent driven industries (music, film, journalism)?

Do internships just fall in this hole where you'd like to have an office wench
but can't quite justify it in a budget, or is it entirely a made up social
convention where older generations are extracting rents from new graduates?

At any rate, the effect seems pretty clear to me: unpaid internships are huge
drivers of inequality. They obviously limit opportunities for social mobility
towards people that can be subsidized, or otherwise have access to liquidity.
There's something really insidious about pushing people away from increasingly
wide classes of cushy jobs they're otherwise perfectly capable of performing.

Startups: pay your (non technical) interns minimum wage, at least. It makes me
kind enraged to see this start to happen in our industry.

~~~
jreeve
"... unpaid internships are huge drivers of inequality."

I believe that they can be, but as someone who actually had an unpaid intern
(and who eventually got said intern a job at the company where we were
working), let me make a case that they do not have to be exploitative.

I personally enjoy teaching, and have taught at two different universities. In
addition to simply being a rewarding thing to do, it is a good way to get even
better at whatever you are teaching.

So when I was the production manager in charge of making a bunch of marketing
sites for small insurance agencies, I called up one of the local universities.
They were quite happy (after some conversations with their faculty) to send me
a student who was getting ready to graduate and who was interested in creating
content for the web.

I didn't expect the intern to get any actual work done, just to kind of try
and work through some of the projects that we were doing. The work that I was
giving him was pretty much the same work that the paid staff were getting, and
although we actually did end up using elements of his designs he was much
slower and had a much smaller skill set than someone I would actually hire.

However, after a semester of working with us, his markup, scripting, and
associated skills were a lot better. In addition to his own efforts, I spent
time structuring his work assignments in ways that built from one topic to the
next, and was available to critique his work in ways that he found useful.

So, this relationship was mutually beneficial: he is more skilled than he was,
has at least some work experience to put down (other than food service), he
received course credit (IIRC), and got a picture of what the inside of that
kind of agency looks like.

For our part, we got a very small amount of marginal work, and for my personal
part I improved my own scripting and CSS skills, in addition to simply
enjoying working with folks who are learning.

Now, if we were just trying to fill a minimally skilled position with someone
who was an employee and skim by calling them an "intern" instead of "an
exploited worker", that would be different.

But I believe it is possible (though perhaps not likely) that unpaid, non-
exploitative internship relationships can exist.

~~~
j_baker
Ok, so you didn't exploit that worker. Congratulations.

But what about the other kid who may or may not have been more qualified than
the kid you hired, but couldn't afford to work for free?

~~~
jreeve
Well, what about the folks who also couldn't afford to go to the school that
the guy was going to?

I mean, ultimately, the big obvious problem of capitalism is that the upkeep
of labor is pushed onto the laborer... almost to the point where (to a very
small extent) it could be possible that forcing labor to pay for its upkeep
while exploiting it for profit is a defining characteristic of capitalism.

While I find it to be an interesting discussion, unless you want to decry
systematic problems, you're really not going far enough with your "what
about".

And we don't have to do everything within that system, do we? I mean, isn't
direct action a good response to large, systematic problems?

"Wait, what are you saying? Employment should be predicated on the employer
giving the employee an adequate monetary reward in exchange for an adequate
monetary reward for the employee? And if either side isn't getting their
adequate monetary reward, the job shouldn't exist? This is a radical concept!"

No, my point is that an internship is not a"job", interns shouldn't be treated
like "employees", and that I was trading, based on my experience as a both a
teacher and an expert in the content area for a personal reward of getting to
teach for a bit.

When internships are equivocal with jobs, they are exploitative. I agree with
you and the linked article on that.

What is not exploitative is when there is an actual exchange of, say, useful
information and pedagogy in a system where you can't learn techniques without
making stuff, especially in a way that privileged the growth of both a
specific person and a larger workforce.

~~~
j_baker
Sorry, what are you saying? Capitalism is an imperfect system, therefore we
should stop trying to make it better? I mean, of course capitalism has
systemic problems. And many of those are the result of an education system
that rewards those who are already well off. I think banning unpaid
internships would go a long way towards making capitalism a better system.

~~~
jreeve
Fair enough.

But I am not saying that we shouldn't make it better (though if it would
ceases to function in favor of some yet unnamed better thing, I will be much
happier than if it were merely "better").

However, once you want to talk about freedom in the labor market, it should be
pretty clear that there is none at all: what about me? Through no fault of my
own, I can't afford to commute into a city, so I occasionally lose work and
make less than I otherwise would.

But since we really can't do much about these systematic issues on an
individual level, I can respect your stance towards banning unpaid internships
outright: seems like an okay idea to me.

I am not saying that we should make reforms.

I am saying that it's possible to modify how capitalism operates by means
other than banning practices, that is, by improving what people are doing with
unpaid internships by 1) not treating them as labor in any sense and 2) not
making their exchange about money.

Or if you prefer, why internships at all: why not abolish the whole concept of
underpaid, low skilled labor and -only- hire "employees" at a real rate while
working on helping them gain newer and better skill sets?

------
paulgb
I don't buy the argument that unpaid internships are immoral because they
disadvantage the underprivileged. Higher education systematically
disadvantages the underprivileged, especially at US tuition rates. Does that
make going to Harvard unethical? There is clearly a supply/demand mismatch in
some industries, and unpaid internships are a symptom, not the cause.

I get defensive when the issue of unpaid internships comes up because I did an
unpaid internship in High School, learned a hell of a lot, and was able to use
it to gain well-paid internships throughout college.

~~~
wvenable
Honestly comparing an unpaid internship in _High School_ is no where near the
same as requiring 20-somethings in college and university to work for free. I
also did the unpaid internship thing in high school (which turned in a paid
job) and I did a fully paid internships in University. I could not afford to
work for free as an 18 year old on my own.

It's amazing that in a country with a minimum wage it's still possible to hire
people for a job for free.

~~~
paulgb
I'm not saying anything about requiring 20-somethings to work for free. I
couldn't have afforded to work for free in college either. I agree that it's a
different situation.

My point is that I was able to make an informed decision to take an unpaid
position, and it benefited me. Had it been a paid position, it either wouldn't
have been offered (the department didn't have a lot of money) or would have
gone to someone else with more experience. So when people advocate for unpaid
internships to be banned, I get frustrated, especially when they say it's for
the intern's benefit.

Don't get me wrong, it absolutely sucks that it's possible (market-wise) to
hire university grads for nothing, but banning unpaid internships doesn't
solve the underlying market problem. And I'd argue that it doesn't increase
social mobility, either, since floor/ceiling prices tend to encourage
nepotism.

~~~
wvenable
There's currently high unemployment -- could we not eliminate that by making
the minimum wage be zero? I'm sure lots of currently out of work individuals
would take the opportunity to work for nothing for the off chance of getting a
paying job in the future. Isn't that exactly the same thing?

I don't believe it's a market problem, it's a social problem. You have this
pool of ever increasing free labor not because of the market but because it's
now _necessary_ to intern to get a job. If an employer has to choose between
someone who will work for free or someone who won't because they can easily
get a paying job at Starbucks, who are they going to choose?

------
geebee
Unpaid internships seem to be rare for programmers...

\- Programmers of any sort who can get the job done in demand. There are more
people who want to pay them than programmers available.

\- Even inexperienced programmers add value - sometimes a tremendous amount of
value. It's not too hard to find a non-critical, short term project that would
still be very useful, and the intern starts adding value on day one. So
employers are less likely to "do without" if it turns out they have to pay.

\- Software interns have a better unpaid internship than the one you're
offering - founding their own company. If a recent grad with programming
ability is getting outside financial help (the kind that a parent might give
to a recent grad doing an unpaid internship in the entertainment industry),
that programmer can just try creating an app and seeing how to turn it into
something financially viable. They might fail (they probably will fail), but
will the experience be worse than a year of not getting paid at a bigco? (It
depends, but a lot of companies in high tech would be impressed with someone
who took a real crack at creating a financially viable product).

I do occasionally see postings for unpaid cs/engineering internships, posted
on campus bulletin boards. They are almost never from actual, high tech
companies. These postings generally come from industries accustomed to getting
the free interns (publishing, fashion, and so forth) - you know "gain valuable
industry experience by writing extenstions in python for our CMS). It feels
good to see these posts go up later offering a bit of pay (though still
generally much lower than the interns could get elsewhere).

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Internships are for people with a knowledge about, but not direct experience
in some thing. That can apply as easily to programming as it can journalism.

~~~
geebee
It can apply to journalism, but as easily as programming? It's hard to say,
this is an interesting question. I think it boils down to this: how easily can
a person from the outside gain experience in a field?

There's a wide spectrum here. In software, it has become (especially in recent
years) extremely easy to write and release an application to the world. Web
sites, wireless apps, and so forth. So if you're going to work "for free", you
really don't need to join a big organization to get that experience. I'm not
saying there couldn't be benefits, but you could almost look at a startup as
an unpaid internship working for yourself with massive upside.

On the other side of the spectrum you might find something like surgery. I
heard about a man who knew how perform a procedure on infants, who was later
discovered to not possess the right credentials and licensing. He had "learned
by doing." I guess you could view much of medical school and residency as a
non-paid (or low paid) internship in a field where many people believe it
would be unconscionable to sidestep the normal training.

How hard is it to just launch your own fashion line, create your own
"journalism" experience by starting a blog, and so forth? The world is opening
up - certainly it's getting easier and easier to create, market, and
distribute without the permission or help of a large organization. I think
software is at the forefront, but certainly other fields are opening up as
well.

------
ianthiel
Why should students who aren't able to get paid internships be denied the
right to have an unpaid internship? I would not be where I am today were it
not for unpaid internships.

Some people would be helped by mandating all internships be paid, but these
are not the people who need the most help. The people who need the most help
are the ones that would be cut off from any chance at early work experience by
such a system.

The idea of everyone having a paid internship is nice, but many places will
simply stop offering them if unpaid interns aren't an option.

Also, no one is forcing these students to work anywhere. Yes, market forces
drive them towards an internship, but there are many internships in the
market.

If unpaid internships were banned or otherwise made illegal, companies could
still bring in students as volunteers, which are unpaid. They would still get
the same experience and be in exactly the same position, except now they are
no longer eligible for college credit and certain legal protections. How is
that a better system?

Are there any compelling arguments why unpaid internships should be made
illegal? If not illegal, then how should/could they be reformed?

------
ThomPete
I got paid during my internship and when I later started a company we always
paid our interns.

I think as a general rule internships should be paid simply because if the
company can't afford to hire an intern then they shouldn't be having one in
the first place.

I realize it's a nice way to get some help for your struggling business and if
someone really want to get in to a place that isn't looking for interns then
it makes some sense.

~~~
davedx
I agree completely. To be honest I don't even understand how it's legal (I'm
in the EU). I think through some kind of academia-related loophole.

------
gms
Organisations have decided that this specific set of internships aren't worth
paying a wage for. Workers have decided that they are worth their time, for
the experience/foot in the door they gain.

If you ban unpaid internships, companies won't offer the positions anymore (as
they have decided their value is zero), which means people seeking them won't
be able to obtain them.

Sounds like everyone would actually be worse-off.

~~~
j_baker
You mean _a sizable subset_ of workers have decided they're worth their time.
I think it's worth bringing up Maslowe's hierarchy of needs. If you can't
afford to eat or pay rent, the experience you're getting is among the least of
your concerns. If your food and rent situation is taken care of beforehand
(and it's almost always done so by someone else), _then_ you get to base your
decision on whether or not the time is worth the experience.

~~~
gms
This dilemma applies to everyone. If you can't afford to do what you want,
then earn money doing something else until you can. Alternatively, do both at
the same time, using your earned money to simultaneously subsidise your time
doing the other thing.

It's also possible that you decide this unpaid experience is just not worth it
after all, in which case you can get a job that actually pays.

------
fierarul
This is odd: just today I've posted our internship projects and they are all
for paid positions.

And actually nowadays all students are forced by the University to have a
short internship and it doesn't have to include a wage!

But I've decided to pay the students anyhow for 2 simple reasons:

* I want good students to apply. We are a small company.

* I want students to care more about the internship than just showing up and do the minimum.

------
datr
Are internships with The Atlantic paid or unpaid?

Edit: According to this article:
[http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/04/06/atlantic-publisher-
ta...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/04/06/atlantic-publisher-takes-stand-
on-intern-pay-who-will-follow/) all atlantic interns are paid.

~~~
dummyaccount999
I worked for Atlantic Media (this is a throwaway), and based on my experience
there, that organization is harmed just as badly by its low-paid internships
as it would be if they did not pay at all. A significant portion of the
drudgery is performed by interns, and the company is very reluctant to hire
new people. And they get away with it because of the bright-eyed college kids
who will do this for low-pay. Few to none of the interns come back for a
permanent position.

The corporate attitude at Atlantic Media is that people are generally
expendable, and that the staff on-hand will pick up the slack when pissed off
employees walk out the door. So most of the work there is performed by
underpaid interns and underpaid, disgruntled employees.

------
sterling312
Feel free to comment, I want to hear what other people think on this issue.

I think there is nothing inherently wrong with unpaid internships. If the
market price for your work is low enough to only compensate experience gained,
that's perfectly fine. What's wrong with the system are more generalize than
that, and there are two problems that causes it. I would break it down to A)
industrial organizational problem and B) market downturn (and to an extent
upturn) + inefficiency and lagging effects.

Part A is more about the over abundance of certain firms in the market supply-
demand that makes it very difficult to pay interns. Since I've never worked as
a unpaid-intern before (it might happen soon though :/), correct me if I'm
wrong, but most of them are either in marketing, legal assistant positions, or
journalism. Marketing firms that do not offer paid internships are usually
small agencies that are barely able to survive on their own; same thing is
true with journalism; the whole legal market has wage flooring that
artificially reduces the supply of laws and therefore law firms. It seems to
me that these industries needs to better allocate and either become more
competitive via innovation, and people going into those industry might want to
reconsider their path.

Part B is more on the fact that labor market is inherently inefficient, and in
a recession, it exaggerates the underlining problem in part A. This is why we
are starting to see more unpaid internship instead of flat wage cuts.

------
mayneack
I was an unpaid intern at a lobbying office last summer and will be an unpaid
congressional intern this summer (both DC). However, my college has given me a
stipend (sort of merit based) so I can end up net positive on the summer.

I certainly wouldn't be able to afford this if it weren't for the stipend
(though I'd probably do it for less and just break even or slightly negative).
The biggest thing that I think is different for my intern experience from what
I hear about the horrors about unpaid interns is that I get money like a paid
intern, but have the expectations of an unpaid intern. The people I work for
aren't paying me, so they can't expect too much labor out of me. As far as
they're concerned, their payment is in experience, so I basically got free
reign to do (or watch other people do) many things that might not be
productive, but I found interesting. The anecdotal evidence of my friends with
paid positions had to really earn their pay and don't have anywhere near the
freedom that I did. It's plausible that I just found a good internship last
summer (no fetching coffee), but I would say that I personally benefited from
being paid by my college and not my employer.

------
jhspaybar
As a Junior who is going to be interning with _undisclosed large internet
company_ this summer, I think that much of the problem and reason for unpaid
internships is that there are few jobs in the industry of choice for these
interns. Being a double Major in Computer Science and Business Economics I can
clearly see the economic forces at play(and really anyone should). These
unpaid positions are springing up in industries that are often shrinking, or
do not require overly talented skill sets to operate in. It's unfortunate for
the workers, and I'd like to say they should be standing up and saying "no",
but given the realities of their industries it may sadly be in their best
interests to work for free.

Had they simply looked ahead when enrolling in college, they could have seen
that majoring in something like journalism, while enjoyable would lead to
brutal competition and low wages. This isn't a situation all interns face,
when those in finance, computers, and a few other majors are capable of
demanding $25-$35k of compensation for 3 months of a summer internship, it
becomes clear this is problem affecting only some industries.

------
fidrelity
is this really an issue in the tech industry? I'm studying in austria,
absolved an internship in germany, got paid quite well and so did all my
fellow students (internships all over europe, US, australia).

~~~
davedx
Here in the Netherlands, from what I gather, it's the norm, yes. My gf did all
of her internships for free, and the place I work at now pays something like
200 euros/month to their interns, which comprise almost half of our staff.
They do pretty great work, too - definitely comparable with what a full-time
employee produces.

Comparing it to the one internship I did while at university in the UK, where
I worked at UBS for a summer and was paid enough to buy bottles of champagne
at a bar on pay day to celebrate and go shopping at Harrods, it seems pretty
unfair.

------
CPops
In most cases, an unpaid internship is probably a bad idea. But individuals
should be making that choice based on their unique set of circumstances and
goals. Individuals should be free to make a choice whether or not the
experience they gain, the connections they make, the resume blurb, and whether
getting their foot in the door is worth more to them than their free labor. In
most cases its probably a bad idea, but in some cases some people might see
the opportunity as worth their effort.

IMO, the issue here is that labor laws prevent companies from offering unpaid
internships that involve something that a business can actually benefit from
or that can conceivably displace a paid employee. Ostensibly created to
prevent exploitation, these labor laws actually create exploitation by
effectively forcing an unpaid internship to be an exercise in busy work for
any company that actually follows the law.

------
mindcrime
One premise of this article is faulty. They presume that you can only accept
an unpaid internship if you're from a wealthy / privileged family or whatever.
But that's not true. There's no particular reason you couldn't, say, work an
unpaid internship 8 hours during the day, and work a second job at night,
busing tables, washing dishes, working as a barista at Starbucks, or whatever.
Plenty of people already work 2 jobs to make ends meet, so a college age kid
with (hopefully) minimal living expenses could very likely manage this.

Note that I'm talking summer internship, when school is out, of course. I'm
not proposing one should go to school, work a real job and work an internship.

This is also not to refute the idea that unpaid internships may be bad for
other reasons... I'm just arguing against the idea that they're bad because
they are only available to the children of the privileged.

~~~
Tiktaalik
Carrying on two jobs is technically possible but it would still be remarkably
difficult and I think unrealistic to do this. The argument that the system
overly benefits the wealthy is still valid.

~~~
res0nat0r
Realistically many single parents work two or even more jobs to make ends
meet.

~~~
drumdance
That's because the alternative is homelessness. The alternative to an unpaid
internship is taking a job you don't like. Not nearly as powerful a motivator.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Well no. The alternative to an unpaid internship, for most of the people
actually stuck in unpaid internships, is unemployment.

------
droithomme
More interesting than the topic I think is their method of creating three
daily articles. Ask for comments, sort the comments into pros and cons, then
publish each on subsequent days with minimal commentary, and no pay offered to
the people who actually crowdsourced the writing of the article.

------
gm
Who gives a crap? Honestly: If you do not like the idea of being an unpaid
intern, then don't be one.

What's not a worthwhile opportunity for you might be an opportunity to someone
else.

Am I missing something? Seems like unpaid internships affect me and my
job/economy as much as someone else eating a donut affects my weight.

~~~
j_baker
Honestly, if you don't like reading articles that complain about interns who
aren't paid, don't read them. What's not a worthwhile opportunity for you
might be an opportunity for someone else.

In all seriousness, unpaid internships benefit no one other than the employer
who gets free labor and the few students who have enough money to not care
whether they get paid or not. They're not good for paid workers who now have
to start salary negotiations with the other side upset that they even have to
pay them at all. Nor are they good for the economy, which needs more consumer
demand. And they certainly aren't good for students who are well-qualified,
but can't afford to not get a pay check.

Help me understand how unpaid internships _aren't_ a mechanism to keep the
rich rich and to keep the poor from becoming productive members of society.
Seriously.

~~~
gm
A good unpaid internship is the beginning of an apprenticeship:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship>

If the internship does not lead to future employment at the same organization,
then it might at another organization.

A bad unpaid internship should go unfilled because the intern is not gaining
anything from it.

