To intern or not to intern?
To intern, or not to intern — is there even a question?
According to a recent New York Times report, a full three-quarters of the 10 million college students enrolled in four-year schools in America will work as interns at least once before graduation.
Internships are a bit like dating, in that they give both sides — in this case, employers and prospective employees — the chance to test-drive one other before entering into a more binding commitment. Internships are beneficial in other ways, as well. For employers, they mean (usually) reliable, quality — albeit temporary — workers at no cost, or much lower cost, than a traditional employee. For interns, they can offer a big leg up on the competition. According to another New York Times report, college interns get more job offers than applicants without internship experience, and jobs that grow out of internships often command higher starting salaries than those that do not.
But internships — particularly unpaid ones — are not without controversy. One Times opinion piece argues that schools encourage, and in many cases require, students to participate in internships without putting safeguards in place to inform them of their rights or protect them from potentially exploitative employers. It also criticizes the practice of charging students precious tuition dollars for unpaid internships, all in the name of earning academic credit.
Personally, I see the value in internships. As an undergrad in journalism, I had two internships — one unpaid, the other well-paid. I learned a great deal from both and never felt exploited in either. I paid tuition dollars to receive three college credits for the paid internship, an internship that gave me a huge foot in the door to employment after graduation.
But all this was as a traditional college student. I’m curious what college internships mean to our audience of largely nontraditional college students? What difficulties arise for active-duty students in academic programs that require internships for graduation? How can you be expected to complete, for example, 20 hours of work at an internship per week if you are deployed or TDY?
Or, take the whole internships-lead-to-employment argument. Are nontraditional learners unable to compete for promising internships because they have families to support and can not afford to work for substantially reduced salaries, or even for free? Does this unfairly penalize these students in the job search?
I’m curious: What are readers’ experiences and opinions about college internships?
