BREAKING DOWN THE INTERNSHIP BARRIER

Finding an internship is hard. Making it accessible is harder.

Words by Eden Stratton and Qiong Wu

Art by Lilly Chidlaw-Mayen

For college students, internships are a crucial step in career development. One line on a resume can make or break an interview, and the connections forged during summer-long work experiences can open doors previously closed. However, finding an accessible internship is easier said than done. With transportation costs, relocation, and unpaid work still common among large corporations, internships can go from an exciting prospect to a logistical nightmare.

Kelly Chang, a junior Syracuse University student studying advertising and analytics, has completed three unpaid internships during her college career. While she agrees the experiences helped her realize her job aspirations, she says there were significant pitfalls.

“The main problem with that internship is that when you’re in New York City, [and] considering the fact that it’s unpaid, you have to do all the commuting, pay for all the meals — I just don’t think it’s really reasonable,” she said. “You’re working in this big office building, or like in a big company, and then you’re not getting any money.”

While Chang had her parents to assist her financially during her time in New York City, she says that the experience made her wonder about students who did not have the same support.

“I really appreciate my parents for being able to support me when I’m in the city [and] to support my living expenses, but I was literally thinking, ‘let’s just say someone really wants to be in an industry or be in a company that was working in [that industry], but then they don’t have enough of the financial resources, but they still really want the

opportunity?’”

Even for positions that do not require relocation, unpaid internships can still be challenging for college students. For Maya Lewis, a first-year psychology student at SU who is currently doing an unpaid internship with the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), working in an unpaid position poses other challenges, such as time management. According to Lewis, receiving financial compensation for their work would definitely make their life a lot easier.

Lewis is doing this internship for school credit, which means that they are not being paid for the position and are doing it concurrently with their courses. The internship, which sets up opportunities to educate Syracuse residents on political activities and tries to get students involved by setting up events with different campaigns, requires 135 total hours of work. This includes going to the NYPIRG office, attending meetings, and any related work that the interns do on their own time.

Although two interns usually run each NYPIRG campaign, Lewis is solely in charge of their own campaign called Hunger and Humanities. This means that Lewis puts in more time to organize and run their events, such as an ongoing menstrual product drive, which will send the products it receives to campus and community pantries. For Lewis, time management is one of the greatest challenges they face throughout this internship; finding ways to split their time between their coursework, the internship, and everyday tasks is not easy.

“It’s definitely a challenging program,” Lewis said. “It asks a lot of you, and you don’t get a lot of structure and organization to work with.”

Though the internship no doubt offers a meaningful opportunity for students to make an impact in the community, they have to decide whether or not having to balance the intense workload with their regular coursework and other duties is worth doing without any compensation.

Though there are challenges within unpaid internships, there are also obstacles that prevent some students from landing an internship at all.

According to a 2021 National Survey of College Internships Report done by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, students reported that some of the most common obstacles they faced concerning internship participation included “the lack of knowledge about how to find an internship (59.4%), a heavy courseload (55.9%), cancellation due to the pandemic (44.2%), a lack of internship opportunities (41.3%), and the need to work a paid job (40.1%).”

Another factor to consider is that the average distance between interns’ homes and their internships was 315 miles, according to the same UWM report. This raises the concerns of finding transportation and a way to support oneself in a new location. The report also stated that the average internship lasted 18.3 weeks. For students from lower-income backgrounds who need to work to support themselves, this is a significant amount of time to invest in an unpaid position. Even if they are gaining meaningful experience that could help them later in their career, they would be losing a large amount of valuable time and money.

These barriers disproportionately affect students depending on demographic factors such as race and first or continuing-generation student status. According to the UWM report, a significantly lower percentage of Black (13.0%), Hispanic (14.2%), and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (3.3%) students participate in internships when compared with students of other races (around 20%). First-generation college students were also much less likely (15.8%) to participate in internships than their continuing-generation counterparts (23.4%). It is clear that while participating in unpaid internships poses certain challenges, for some students, obtaining one at all comes with its own set of obstacles.

Though students are mostly the ones dealing with these difficulties, SU advisors have also noticed these challenges. Kate Mercer is a Career Exploration Specialist with Central Career Services and noted that most inaccessible, unpaid internships are from social justice organizations with progressive platforms.

“We do still see some internships that are unpaid, which can be extremely disheartening to see,” she said. “We want to put forward opportunities for our students that empower them and train them. And especially when you see organizations that have social justice-driven missions having unpaid internships, it feels kind of ironic.”

For example, prospective interns can apply to work on Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s team this summer through Handshake. However, the opportunity requires interns to live in New York City and work for two months without pay. While Senator Gillibrand offers paid internships, the amount is not clearly displayed or discussed.

Despite the barriers, specialists like Mercer are attempting to provide support for students. The SU Career Center currently offers summer internship awards, which are designed to pay for living and travel expenses for unpaid interns. Interns are able to apply for funding through June 30th, offering financial flexibility. In addition to offering grants to applicants, Mercer says the tide is beginning to change.

“[A] positive thing to come out of this COVID era is that employers aren’t putting as much weight on factors like internship experience, and factors such as GPA are becoming less important to employers — they want to know what your skills are,” she said. “Hopefully, they’re putting more emphasis on the more creative ways that folks are getting those experiences.”