“Some of my friends can’t take these internships and spend a summer without making any money because they have to help pay for their own tuition or help their families with finances,” she said. “That makes them less competitive candidates for jobs after graduation.” ... “Employers increasingly want experience for entry-level jobs, and many students see the only way to get that is through unpaid internships.”To me this is cynicism of the highest order. They're outright saying they don't want work experience, they want compliance.
would tell paid employees to "work harder, I could get an intern to do that shit for free"I've always wondered why there were so many workplace shootings in the US, but reading more about workplace culture over there I'm wondering less.
My personal belief is that a Pay Per Internship has to look bad.How would employers know if you paid for the internship?
From what I'm told, the unions often block internships because they fear that paid workers will be laid off in favour of unpaid students. Fair enough, I can see some companies doing that, but where do they expect that the next generation of workers will gain meaningful training? The universities?Back in the old days, there were these things called entry level jobs. You did exactly the things an intern now does, deriving the same benefits, but your company paid you a living wage for it, because you were working. Now, this idea seems so quaint it's shocking.
one of a host of ways of preserving class privilegesI agree, but not in the way you mean, anotherpanacea. It's one thing for a company to select amongst job candidates for inherited wealth markers AKA class, that's just run-of-the-mill discrimination. Bad, but it goes on regardless of the economic climate—discriminatory managers are going to do their prejudice thing come boom or recession. Bigots stay bigots.
"Tutor children in math and science?!? For FREE? How dare you: that's SOMEBODY'S JOB you're stealing!" Except of course that nobody's doing the job, which is why kids need tutoring, and their parents need pro bono legal counsel, and too many people still need free medical clinics, etc.Well, actually often somebody is doing the job. In my country we have decently funded public education, Legal Aid, a pharmaceutical benefits scheme and public-funded medicare. You shouldn't universalise very specific policy situations.
So this new version of apprenticeship, the unpaid intern, seems to be a pretty good modern solution to the problem of one having no experience in fields that require experience that can't be purchased in a school.It's certainly good for employers who get free labor, and it's arguably good for rich kids who get access to professions that are closed to most of their less-rich peers, although that assumes that internships actually lead to paid positions. It's very bad for the young people who are excluded, and I would argue that it's bad for society. I really don't think it's good for the media and entertainment industries to be dominated by people from upper-middle-class, big-city backgrounds. So I guess I think the question is whether you're looking at this from the perspective of employers and rich people or from the perspective of non-rich people and society.
In this brief, we outline the limitations of the current college internship system and lay out a proposal that would enable low-income college students to pursue paid internships at either non-profit organizations or in government. We propose that the federal government initially appropriate $500 million in spending for the Student Opportunity Program to support about 100,000 low-income college students per year. This would be funded initially by capping contributions to section 529 savings plans (a recent recommendation of the Treasury Department to the White House’s Middle Class Task Force) and consolidating the currently disparate system of higher education tax expenditures. Going forward, we envision increasing support for the campus-based components of our proposal to provide expanded funding to more universities and colleges.That's from Demos's recent publication, Paving the Way Through Paid Internships. Notice the emphasis on public serve and non-profits!
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posted by prunes at 7:02 PM on April 5, 2010 [1 favorite]