Why all unpaid internships are exploitative

Any college student who has completed or applied for an unpaid internship has probably attempted to justify the notion of working for free with the promise of gaining professional experience and valuable contacts.

For some self-supporting students, however, unpaid internships are outside the realm of possibility.

Although the overall number of unpaid internships is declining, according to a 2017 report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), new standards set by the Department of Labor in January 2018 made it easier for employers to legally hire unpaid interns.

According to previous guidelines set by the department, there are seven standards employers must meet for unpaid internships to be classified as legal. These regulations stipulate that unpaid interns cannot replace paid employees and the work they do on site must relate to what they would learn “in an educational environment.”

While these are indeed sensible guidelines, as of last January, employers no longer need to meet a certain number of them to be considered in compliance with the law. This setback will hopefully be rendered moot by the trend of unpaid internships becoming rarer.

Only 43 percent of all internships in 2017 were unpaid, according to the NACE report. The overall decline in unpaid internships may be due to new conversations surrounding the ethics of hiring college students to work for free.

While some unpaid internships may indeed offer valuable experience and professional networking opportunities, the economic burden that they place on students and families who are unable to subsidize an unpaid intern’s living expenses is undeniable.

A student whose family can afford to support them while they work at a company for free has an inherent advantage over a student whose family cannot.

This automatically places many students from marginalized groups, including low-income students, students of color and first-generation students, out of the running, regardless of their qualifications.

Given that students who complete internships are more likely to be offered full-time, salaried jobs after graduation, unpaid internships also exacerbate hiring inequity in the workforce.

Some argue that any hypothetical law which would require all companies to compensate their interns would negatively impact smaller businesses.

I do not believe it is outside of a professional organization’s capability to reconfigure budgets in order to pay a small number of interns the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

The immediate concern ought to be for students who are looking to gain professional experience but need to be paid while they do it. Solely offering course credit to interns who are otherwise unpaid does not count as “compensation,” as students must pay their college for those credit hours.

Companies could compensate their interns in a variety of ways in addition to course credit, from a transportation stipend to hourly wages.

Offering commuter benefits to interns could serve as an interim step for smaller companies who are transitioning to paying their interns an hourly wage.

Internships benefit students who want to try out a prospective career as well as companies looking to recruit directly from a pool of candidates who already know the ins and outs of their organizations. But they are jobs and therefore must come with some form of compensation.

You are valuable and your time is valuable. You shouldn’t have to give it away for free.