On Internships and Privilege

For my graduate program, I am required to find an internship and complete a certain number of internship hours.  While I am not against the idea of requiring something like this in order to put the skills gained from the program to use in a real-world situation, I do have problems with internships in general, especially those that are unpaid.

In this country, we generally have a belief that college is accessible to everyone.  Granted, not everyone can get into Yale, Harvard, Stanford, etc.  In fact, some people might have to go to community college before a four-year because they aren’t academically prepared for a four-year institution right after high school. Generally, though, if someone is willing to put in the time and effort, we believe that they can eventually earn a college degree.

I would also argue that there’s also a skewed perception that since students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are somehow more likely to get scholarships or other kind of aid, it is easier for them to go to college.  Statistically, those students are more likely to be from underrepresented minority groups and are first-generation college students (students who are the first in their families to attend college or earn a BA/BS).

Given these assumptions, employers are able to comb the job market in search of employees that have earned a college degree.  In this time of sluggish economic growth and stagnant employment, employers can be even more selective when hiring. 

I am lucky.  I graduated from college in 2009 and entered a job market that was absolute crap.  However, I got a job that gave me real-world experience in a field that I was incredibly interested in.  I worked a full-time job with a salary and benefits for my one-year contract and then got a job immediately afterwards working on a political campaign.  Thanks to these experiences, I have been able to leverage a lot of connections I’ve made into new job opportunities.

Here’s where I run into problems.  Many students were not and are not as fortunate as I was.  I have heard from many people that employers are more and more often asking for applicants who are just graduating from college to have internships.  A college degree alone simply isn’t enough any more.

I understand that it’s a competitive job market.  In fact, I think that it’s good to have a competitive job market.  However, I think that access to internship opportunities is not something that is readily available to all students.  As an undergrad, I worked a part-time job during the school year to cover room and board and took a full course load.  During the summer, I moved back to my parents’ house so that I could work 35-40 hours a week at a just-above-minimum wage job and save money to cover expenses during the year.  I also maxed out the federal financial aid that I was able to get.

If I had needed to find an internship in order to become competitive in the job market, I would not have been able to do it.  I had no car and relied on public transportation during the school year.  My schedule was pretty much 9:30-6 Monday through Friday with a few breaks during the day, most of which I spent studying.  I also often had commitments on the weekends for work that would have conflicted with any internship.  On top of that, the few times that I looked for internships, I could only find unpaid positions.

This is not a unique story.  Even now, after I have a Bachelor’s degree and am halfway done with my Master’s, I am struggling to find an internship that isn’t unpaid.  Competition for local internships is fierce and anything offering compensation is even more so.  At this point, I can’t afford to move for an internship that will only last through the summer.  I have a car, which means that I can commute to an internship, but additional expenses come with that (gas, insurance, repairs, etc).  If I were to get an offer for an internship that would require me to relocate, I could not afford to pay two rents, two sets of utilities, and the cost of moving unless the internship offers fairly substantial compensation.

I understand that many organizations cannot afford to pay for interns.  The economy is lean and many companies struggle to find ways to pay the staff they currently have.  For those companies, I think it’s fine to have unpaid intern positions, but the internships need to be flexible enough to accommodate the needs of the intern.  These internships should cater to the intern rather than to the company or organization. 

Employers also need to understand that the students who can afford to take unpaid intern positions are not going to come from some of the most diverse backgrounds that higher education has to offer. 

Low-income and first-generation students often don’t know what the potential benefits are of having an internship or are unable to take one due to other obligations outside of school.  Students who are academically strong, but must work in order to continue their education are also unlikely to be able to take an internship.

Many students that can afford to be interns will be business students or upper-middle class students who have grown up with a certain amount of financial privilege.  These students haven’t necessarily had it easy.  However, they have the luxury of having enough resources to afford to get that kind of work experience.  I n my admittedly limited experience, all of the people that I knew who did internships in college were white, upper-middle class, local (grew up near the school they attended), and had extremely supportive parents that were willing to help them offset the costs.  In two cases, their parents provided them with a car so they could get to and from their internships.

So where does that leave students like me?  What does this mean for the future of industry and diversity in the workplace?  Even though people have access to a degree, are we still creating a discrepancy between society’s “haves” and “have-nots”?  These questions should all be looked at and discussed at length by employers and higher education institutions alike.  We need to make sure that we are not only creating a system that minimizes inherent inequalities, but also valuing the experiences and perspectives that the diverse student population in this country brings to the workforce.