Waiting Your Intern

By Miraj Barodia on May 15, 2013

Internships. The one word that means so much to an average college student in today’s workforce. The word that sends chills down our spines. But most importantly, the word’s context has changed, and not in the favor of college students.

The very first interns weren’t getting coffee and sending mail out in New York City. Instead, they were anesthetizing, bloodletting and vaccinating. Between the mid-1800s and World War II, interns were only found in hospitals. Medicine was considered a unique field that could only be learned through observing and hands-on practice. Those internships are now the medical field’s modern-day residencies.

It was not until the 1930’s that education and business leaders wanted to instill an easier transition from school into the workforce.

Obviously as internships started to grow, Congress passed myriad laws to regulate them. A pivotal bill was the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which included a 6-point test that is still used today, even to hire unpaid interns.

Even before the financial collapse around 2007 and 2008, internships – both paid and unpaid – were increasing. The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that 50% of college grads in 2008 had held an internship, compared with 17% in 1992. But the Great Recession accelerated that boom. Today, an estimated one-third to one-half of the 1.5 million internships in the U.S. are unpaid.

   

This phenomenon is one that boggles me to this day. Unpaid interns are often doing heavy lifting for small start-up companies and have tasks similar to entry level employees and get little to no compensation. Sometimes companies will offer stipends for transportation but this is not enough for some students that need money to support themselves.

College credit is the answer for many of these companies who fill out a few forms and send them to a university for a whole summer of work. It’s pathetic the way some companies think that in the workplace, if there’s mindless drivel to do, you get college kids to do it for free.

Overall, I hope that companies begin to treat internships with more value because the work that ensues an internship can be grueling but if you do work, you should be paid. Simple as that.

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