Unpaid Internships for students/graduates

[a_cubed]

BBC News 24 carried the story today (30 Jan 2006) a follow-up to their story of Jun 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4623333.stm on Tony Blair's son Euan working as an unpaid intern for senior politicians in the US. Today's story included a wider look at the concept of internships. For those who don't know these are unpaid jobs which offer a benefit to both "employer" and intern. The employer gains a bright worker who doesn't need paying and the intern gains valuable experience which will give them a leg up in certain professions, particularly in politics.

The report from the BBC today featured an interview with a graduate recruiter who implied that the best jobs are more or less now only available to those graduates with significant experience, usually if not exclusively gained via an internship.

The recent changes to funding of HE in the UK were highly controversial. The most controversial aspect centred on whether potential students from families with low incomes would be put off going into University by the size of the loan they would graduate with. The arguments put forward for the new fees regime included claims that a degree provides graduates with a significant monetary return (speaking as an academic who is probably about to enter a significant dispute over our pay I can assure everyone that my four degrees have not generated a pay premium - on the contrary compared to my brother who did not complete a degree my lifetime earnings are well below someone with similar abilities without any degree). If the best jobs are only available to those who can afford (i.e. those who have well-off parents who can subsidise them for up to a year living away from home for no pay).

At a time when his government, pushed to the brink of defeat despite a huge parliamentary majority, introduced enormous debts for future graduates, for Tony Blair to be taking part in this corrupt and class-ridden system of unpaid internships, is frankly disgusting.

My School (School of Systems Engineering at The University of Reading) runs a number of sandwich courses with a year spent on placement gaining work experience. Unlike some other such courses we do not accept unpaid internships as valid. Our students are worth more than that. Their skills and abilities, even at the end of second year, are worth being paid at a reasonable rate. At the same time that his government introduced a national minimum wage for most workers, Tony Blair is involved in encouraging not only a low-pay culture, but a no-pay culture for our best and brightest. Not only is this insulting to the young people concerned, it is also a divisive and non-meritocratic measure in the graduate job market. It removes any chance of a level playing field by barring many graduates, who need to work during term time and all "vacations" just to make ends meet, from the best and most influential jobs. This is creating a new self-sustaining political and business elite class and should be deplored.

Comments

[ggreig]

I don't really have anything to add - you've said it.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I was a student on a sandwich course - one of the courses that came out of the Finniston report. If they've forgotten the lessons of the 1980s, heaven help us all...

[tobyaw]

I fail to see the problem with internships. Should people be forbidden from working for free (or for a low stipend) to gain work experience? Should Tony Blair have forbidden his now-adult son from taking an internship?

I thought interns were most commonplace in the medical profession, rather than politics. And being an intern does not necessarily mean not being paid - it just means gaining experience and/or training through a job.

With both David Cameron and Gordon Brown emphasising the benefits of volunteering, I suspect that unpaid work by school- or university-leavers for charities, hospitals or political parties will become increasingly common in the UK. And if volunteer work is valued by employers, isn't that to everybody's benefit?

[ggreig]

Unpaid internships are not in themselves a bad thing - as a_cubed pointed out, they can potentially offer a benefit to both parties - but what is a problem is if they become the norm. They would extend the period of debt-accumulation that studentship is now, and the average student with a less-than-stellar financial background and less-than-stellar prospects will suffer as a result. The more "normal" unpaid internships become, the more unscrupulous employers can use them to exploit young people. So long as they're relatively rare, they will remain voluntary and - probably - mutually beneficial.

[tobyaw]

But if they are rare they will be continue to be limited to those who either have the resources to be able to work for little or nothing, or to those who have the enough career ambition to save (or incur debt) to support themselves. Unless they are common enough to be the norm, they will not be able to benefit the average student/job-seeker.