'Tis the season to figure out what you’re doing this summer. Depending on your field, you might have already applied and heard back from several internships. Internships have their pros and cons, but internships should not be the be-all and end-all of your efforts as an undergrad. They are increasingly competitive and increasingly unpaid.
The number of students with internships has grown to over half of all college graduates, doubling the number from two decades ago. Of those, 46.5 percent are unpaid.
We as an editorial board feel that there are two important notes we can make on internships.
First, if you don’t get that one internship, it’s going to be OK. Though many workplaces do look for candidates that have internship experience, they won’t know which internships you’ve applied for. So, just getting any internship probably will be enough to get your foot in the door. Second, internship culture is harmful for many students, and our University needs to critically think about how it promotes internships. Universities often push students into internships, with 90 percent of universities offering credit hours for internships, amounting in students paying tuition for those credit hours without actually being in a classroom.
Yet internships, unpaid ones in particular, exploit their workers. Most interns do not have workers’ rights at all, including sexual harassment rights. Unpaid interns often pay to work their jobs: between transportation costs and lost potential time at a part-time job, students could lose some serious money, which is particularly harmful for students without parents who can float them extra cash.
But it’s not as though students individually have the ability to change the internship market. Since many still feel they need internships to get a job after graduation, few can take a principled stance against internships. That’s why we hope UNC will take a closer look at how it promotes internships. Majors that force students into internships that often eat up far more time than the three credit hours they get in return really need to think about how much students actually gain from these jobs. UNC also needs to think more about internship fairs that include lots of unpaid internships.
If the answer to these evaluations is that internships exploit students without giving much back, the University ought to pull back on promoting them.
So if you don’t get that one internship, think of it this way: you would’ve had to pay a significant amount of money with potentially very little reward and high chances of having your labor exploited.
