The High Cost of Unpaid Internships Heavy competition and minimal regulation leave interns high and dry. By Stephanie Saviola and Benita Zepeda Illustrations by Andrew Park
WhEn 24-yEar-old James Orbesen got his first internship just weeks after his college graduation in 2010, he was optimistic about the opportunities it offered. He thought he landed a paid internship that would lead to a full-time position with an upand-coming company. Well, he thought wrong. A few weeks into his internship, Orbesen, a graduate of Roosevelt University in Chicago, found he wasn’t learning anything valuable, and his promises of getting paid hadn’t materialized. With unclear duties and lengthy overtime, the job was a dead-end. “If I was getting some sort of monetary compensation, I probably could have stuck it out a little longer,” says Orbesen, who decided to leave the internship within a few months. “I wasn’t learning anything, but at least it would have been a paycheck.” For many college graduates like Orbesen, unpaid internships are a way into the workforce at a time when salaried starting positions are hard to find. Employers depend on them to locate new hires. According to a 2010 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 83.4 percent of 235
organizations surveyed say the primary focus of their internship program is to help recruit entry-level college hires. Thirty one percent say they offer these programs to provide students with experience. But what happens when these internships are not beneficial or do not conform to what was promised? The options for interns are limited—quit or take your chances with the next internship—and many find themselves stressed out, strapped for cash and searching for stability. Unlike undergraduate internships in which students can funnel complaints to a school’s internship coordinator, graduates are on their own. Besides victimizing graduates who are heavily in debt, unpaid internships create a socioeconomic gap. In an economic downturn when an overwhelming number of people are seeking internships, the affluent are at an advantage, whether they’re grads or undergrads. “Most of the people who go [to Ivy League schools] … can afford to do that because they are in a financially different place then most of the students [who] attend an average university,” says Barbara Van Dyke-Brown,
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