It has been a long time since a revolution of the workers was thought to be imminent, but maybe we’ve just been looking in the wrong places. Marx told us it would come from the industrial proletarian, alienated from himself, stripped of his humanity, reduced to the bare minimum of an animal existence by the declining value of his labor. But then the proletarian unionized, industrial wages went up, and his revolution was aborted. What Marx never imagined was today’s intern — young, well-educated, ingratiating, and willing to pay for the privilege of working. This, according to Ross Perlin’s Intern Nation, is the new revolutionary vanguard.
The unpaid internship is still something of a “First World Problem” — a complication generated by one’s own advantages. Perlin estimates that up to 75 percent of students at four-year colleges take at least one internship before graduating — but such students and graduates make up less than 30 percent of their age cohort in the U.S. Moreover, in fields like finance, engineering, and business, internships are often well-compensated and conclude with offers of full-time employment.
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But in “cultural” fields — media, politics, the arts, non-profits — unpaid, insubstantial, dead-end internships are increasingly a prerequisite for landing a full-time position. Intern Nation is full of anecdotes of dismal “work” situations: “custodial interns” at Disney assigned to clean toilets, pyramid schemes stringing along interns in New York apartments, movie-studio interns running around L.A. trying in vain to secure a certain “discontinued flavor of Powerbar” for their bosses.
“The internship,” Perlin writes, “has emerged victorious as the unrivaled gateway to white-collar work, now backed by government policies across the globe, employers’ hiring practices, a nearly unanimous Academy, and a million auxiliary efforts.” Yet they are unregulated by the government, under-scrutinized by the universities that advertise and sometimes require or subsidize them, and blindly boosted by thousands of desperate college students and self-satisfied alumni.
On top of that, the unpaid ones are usually against the law, which requires that any work undertaken by unpaid “trainees” constitute actual training and not contribute to the firm’s “immediate advantage.” As Perlin points out, this hardly describes most unpaid positions, which consist primarily of clerical work for which no training is given (or needed). And firms — even non-profits and the government — absolutely benefit from all those intern-generated stuffed envelopes, promotional tweets, and Capitol tours. In the meantime, interns scramble to cover the costs of such ambiguous “opportunities,” working extra jobs on the side, taking out loans, and pumping their parents for support.
Nonetheless, students are throwing themselves at employers — up to 2 million of them a year, though precise numbers are impossible to track — offering to work for free even where no established internship program is in place. “For many employers, the only limitation in accepting such offers is desk space.” Actually, that’s not quite accurate — I interned at an organization that solved its desk-space shortage by sending interns away to “work from home.”
Internships are a symptom of an abundance of college educated labor that is unable to secure a first job. These young people cannot find paid work in a white collar field and are willing to work in an unpaid job for a while in order to have something to include on their resumes. A strong economic recovery would dry up the supply of willing interns.
In the absence of a dramatic turnaround in the labor market, I think a strengthening of the Fair Labor Standards Act to make unpaid internships illegal is probably good policy. These young people are trapped in a situation where they are afraid that they will lose out on future jobs if they don't take an unpaid internship now. There would be no such pressure if no one had the option of working in an unpaid internship. Instead, our young people could work at fast food restaurants and as lifeguards again; this would lessen the demand for illegal alien labor, and the economic exploitation of our young people by those offering "internships" would cease.
Maybe it's just me, but the article kind of implies that the unpaid, dead-end internship problem is higher in the more left-leaning fields - cultural, media, film industry, etc. - which is not to say there aren't more conservative entities in such fields
Here's another problem, picking winners based on ethnicity rather than merit.
Maybe if my last name were Koganzon and not Ford they would let me pursue a PhD at Harvard!
Since we're being truthful, your name, which sounds so ethnic to Anglified American ears, is your greatest asset, greater than your writing ability or any internship in the universe!
If I were Fordanzen they would have swooped me up from undergrad and whisked me away to the magical land of Ivy!
If you need some proof:
I have a higher undergraduate GPA and LSAT score than our esteemed president and a more diverse job history, but if I were to apply to Harvard Law I guarantee you they would not even write me back!
Jokes on them though I'm part Persian.
...If only I were Persian on my father's side!
Oh come on. I had unpaid internships (at a federal agency and an international organization) that gave me experience, knowledge and credentials that I could not have obtained otherwise. No one is going to pay an inexperienced student to observe and learn. Those internships were invaluable for future positions that were very lucrative. The reason students like these internships is that they know they will pay off down the road.
So, Ms. Koganzon, since there are currently 7 unemployed workers for every job opening and 50% of college grads are making less than 15K per year, what exactly should young people do? How much exactly do you think drunk 20-year-old college students are worth in the business world? (hint: not much).
Internships provide benefits other than pay. This article is nothing more than a pro-minimum wage screed cloaked in outrage.
I find it interesting that you name-dropped Harvard and your Ph.D-in-progress on us, but you declined to mention your field of study. My guess is that since most of your criticism is targeted about the lack of paid internships in "cultural fields", whatever those are, that's what you're studying.
You want to know why there aren't paid internships for "cultural fields"? Because these "fields" have little to no value in the real world.
Study math, science, computers, foreign languages or business if you want to be employed. We're already bursting at the seams with unemployable, worthless "cultural studies" grads.
Good luck with your Ph.D. I hope that your field of study prepares you to pay back those student loans. I hear Harvard's not cheap...
I would tend to agree with your point that studying a topic which can be utilized in an actual production process is important. However, in an education system that is the most expensive on this planet, (1) one should not have to attend a college in order to acquire a profession or a trade, and (2) those that are genuinely talented in the “cultural studies” should be assisted in their pursuits. A nation that cannot build a tradition of arts and humanities becomes nothing but a collection of individuals having little in common besides the pursuit of financial gain.
With all due respect to the author, the problem that has created the "intern economy" has also pushed far too many people into graduate school. You can get a sense of the toll that grad school is taking on both individuals and society by reading blogs like "100 reasons NOT to go to graduate school": External Link
The fundamental problem seems to be that being "educated" no longer means being educated. Young adults are pouring years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars into degrees that are useless to themselves and to their employers. As a society, we value degrees instead of knowledge, which has resulted in a tremendous collective waste of time, energy, and money.
College graduates find themselves having to learn what they need to know in the workplace, which they could have done without a bachelor's degree in political science or art history or psychology.
I am the co-founder of www.CreativeInterns.com and we connect interns from the art and design industries with employers who need their skills. One of the best ways to develop your career is to intern and this relationship can benefit both employer and intern. If it does't then either party can end the relationship at anytime. We always recommend paying interns a stipend, minimum wage or offer other benefits such as paid lunch, free metro cards or free attendance for creative industry events.
The issues brought up here in this column, along with countless other columns and comments throughout the ongoing discourse on the state and nature of higher education in America are merely symptoms of a larger disease. Cure the disease, and the symptoms will subside. The disease, of course, is the higher education charade which our government, unions (but I repeat myself), and universities have been engaging in since Generation X entered high school. The simple fact is that by devaluing a college degree to the point where it is the functional equivalent of a high school diploma has not helped a single person in this country. The vast majority of jobs, from computer technicians to accountants to fast food restaurant management to laborers, would be better served by specialized, hands on training as opposed to a diluted and heady curriculum designed to 'grow' the student as 'people,' which is to say to instill certain socio-cultural values while avoiding both lessons in civics as well as training that could actually be useful in the real world. To put it bluntly, if colleges focused more on training our future intelligensia rather than engaging in a trilateral pyramid scheme which results ultimately in more money to Universities and teacher's unions and more votes to supportive politicos, we'd be much better off. What we have is sheer lunacy.
Now, what does this have to do with internships? Easy, it's a matter of labor value. In college, students pay money to do work in advancing towards a certification. This certification has no intrinsic value in and of itself anymore, as colleges have largely become diploma mills as they have shifted their collective focus from advancing the best and brightest to advancing their own coffers. Students may be naive, but they are not stupid, and they know this at some level. Because the degree itself is valueless, the labor exerted in obtaining it becomes meaningless - without extensive experience in the private sector then, a student lacks the ability to judge his or her labor as anything but meaningless, and therefore, the student becomes willing to essentially resort to slave labor in an attempt to create value. It only stands to reason that for-profit concerns will take advantage of this, they'd be foolish not to.
I would have to concur with the "numbers guy". Math, science, engineering are all essential to the long term growth of a society. Most of the arts and humanities aren't. The factors that determine your compensation are the inherent value of your job to society (I am leaving out many upper management jobs) and the availability of a replacement worker.
This is why teachers need a union and "extortion" to get the pay and benefits they receive. Homeschool mothers have proven, through results, that they can do a better job than the Master Degreed teacher!
Another example is sports. How many people can play ball like Lebron James (please, no comments on the championship)? He has a unique skill that society still values (albeit still an entertainment one). When attendance in the "sporting side" of our leisure activities drops enough the salaries will drop also. I will say, I can't understand why anyone would pay $100+ to go to a ball game. I'd spend the money on a museum and a zoo menbership!
Let's face it, "The Arts" are all about leisure time to the consumers. We don't look to go to museums until we have our other needs met. I'd be willing to bet that museum attendance is down. We have more people and more people with time on their hands (unemployed) but on our heirarchy of needs, art is rather low.
The desire for everyone to attend college has messed up colleges and people's perceptions of society. I was getting a haircut and the barber was bemoaning the fact that her fiance was in an "apprenticeship" and he was "only going to be a plumber". I immediately corrected her as to the societal value of a plumber (clean water, health concerns, the fact that everyone should be using their product daily).
We will all be better off when we acknowledge the value of the trades and reestablish "vocational training" like we had 30-years ago.
It's very simple why the students go along with it--it's the new way of dealing out nepotism. Kids who can afford to do unpaid internships are not kids who need to work at paying jobs to make ends meet. They then have an advantage that the kid who spent the summer working for a dry cleaner doesn't have... all the while cloaking it in the "proper" liberal screed of being altruistic and there for the education of the thing, and how evil it is to expect a pay check for work and time. The kid who worked at the dry cleaner, meanwhile, gets further and further behind, even if he or she arguably learned more useful skills, and most likely didn't shirk on the cultural education--all he or she missed was the shmoozing and networking of obtaining the internship.
I don't mean to sound Marxist and go on about class protection, and I don't think it's a deliberate ploy of some nefarious upper class. It's just a mindset, this idea that having to do paid work is a lesser calling than doing work for free, and that of COURSE, everyone who *really* cared would sacrifice mere money for the chance to rub elbows with the literati. Not being willing or able to do it signifies, to them, appalling disinterest rather than financial responsibility.
"Yet they are unregulated by the government . . . ."
So you are calling for more regulation? Have you thought that through?
"Pressed between these conflicting goals, Perlin limits himself to calling for one major reform to internships: federal labor oversight that would ensure minimum-wage compensation except in the minority of cases in which interns actually meet the federal definition of a 'trainee.'”
I take it you approve of "federal labor oversight" as well as mandatory minimum wages? What about voluntary association? Why should the government tell willing workers that they may not work?
“'social media experience,' 'excellent verbal and written communication skills,' and 'ability to work well within a team environment.'One would be hard-pressed to imagine a college graduate who doesn’t meet these qualifications."
Seriously? You think it's difficult to imagine a college graduate who lacks "excellent verbal [sic] and written communication skills"? Sad to say, imagination isn't required.
My children have landed incredibly interesting and worthwhile internships, one of which has already led to excellent full-time employment, beyond my dreams for my daughter right out of college. Good internships are apprenticeships, and some of the best ones are unpaid. About the only thing I agree with here is that it is a scam for the colleges to charge tuition for "overseeing" an internship.
The argument that unpaid internships are okay because of voluntary association is entirely off base as it assumes a labor market absent of government distortion. The only reason unpaid internships exist is because of the distortive effects of government collusion with higher education to create what essentially amounts to a scam. Businesses, unions, colleges, and politicians all benefit on the backs of those too young to be able to truly make informed and wise decisions. I'm glad that some of the best internships that a previous commenter mentioned were found by his/her children, but how many kids toil cleaning toilets without pay? Is this the same twisted baby boomer logic that calls for spending cuts - except to entitlements which are at the heart of the budget problem?
Today's students are living in the mess created by their parents irresponsibility and gullibility. It's just a shame that the sins of the father will be carried upon the backs of the son.
I agree that many of the things you identify as bad are indeed bad, beginning with federally subsidized loans leading to indentured servitude and higher tuition. But I think it is highly speculative to tie the very existence of unpaid internships to governmental meddling. Even if the relationship were established, freedom of contract would supersede paternalistic concerns about "those too young to be able to truly make informed and wise decisions." The answer is less governmental intervention, not more.
As for the internships themselves, I see them as apprenticeships, which have historically been undertaken for no pay or low pay (along with food and lodging in many cases). It is of course true that there are unworthy internships out there, which an improved economy would probably help to eradicate. But the alternatives suggested here -- lifeguarding and camp counseling -- while perfectly respectable choices, are not high-paying. A would-be intern might or might not be better off selecting them.
Hardcastle--low pay goes further than no pay. And if your internships don't happen to be in the town you live in, you're essentially paying to work. I went to college in Boston and lived in Buffalo. I was thinking about publishing as a career. I couldn't afford to stay in Boston, let alone go to New York. My college didn't have deals with anyone in Buffalo--and there weren't many to start with. (I can't even imagine how few there'd have been if Mom hadn't left my hometown--population 3000, nearest city Rochester, NY, fifty miles away--after I went to college.) Plus, my mom had gotten hurt at work, and the insurance company dragged its feet most of the time I was in college. I had to work to contribute to rent, not to mention contributing to college costs. My summer jobs didn't toss a lot of money into the pot, but they sure God tossed in more than would have been possible if I'd needed to rent an apartment in New York or Boston while having no income at all for my work.
I know, I know--life stinks and then you die, life's not fair, and many other such perfectly true clichés, but yes, I'm quite bitter about a world set up to make sure that only well-to-do kids who either live in the right cities or have parents who can pay for them to stay in said cities for a few months get vast advantages.
Yeah, yeah, poor me, smallest violin in the world, right? ;p
My family didn't have money, either. The difference then was that college was practically "free" at State U. Granted, the low tuition was subsidized by taxpayers, but private colleges were comparatively cheap then, too. Federal student loans coupled with bloated administrations are the problems -- hardly, in my view, the lack of federal regulation.
By the way, the political world isn't "set up" such that some people have advantages over others. As you concede, it's life itself that is "set up" that way. May I note that you have the advantage of being a good and literate writer?
