Posted on 03/28/2011 1:14:02 PM PDT by Niuhuru
I didn’t take their comments as whining. All of them acknowledged the skills they developed in their internships.
I’m not used to hearing folks rave about their early work experiences, whether in a permanent job or internship. And why would they? Few are at all spectacular. Beginners always have the roughest go; the ultimately successful ones appreciate the opportunity to get their foot in the door.
There’s nothing worthless about running museums, fundraising/event organization for charity, publishing magazines or even millinery design. They are all honorable career paths. I can’t figure out this obsession every time an article is posted here about young people’s career aspirations there appears a chorus that seems to feel compelled to chime in about how the only worthwhile degree is in engineering or the hard sciences.
I would merely apply cost-benefit analysis to education decisions.
Taking on $50,000 of student loans to get a degree which will qualify you for a $30,000 a year job doesn't seem like a prudent thing to do. I know lots of 20-somethings buried in education debt (the only debt, by they way, that you cannot escape through personal bankruptcy) that they will be carrying for the rest of their lives.
If Mommy and Daddy are paying for it and you'll graduate free-and-clear, go for it.
Why do you believe it is immoral or crass to apply cost-benefit analysis to education expenses?
And how do you presume to know the long-term outcome of those who have taken out large student loans? They may well enter professions that give them a lifetime of substantial salaries, plenty large enough to pay off those student loans.
I have no quarrel, by the way, with applying cost-benefit analysis to anything. It’s just that there seems to be a little group on FR that thinks that liberal arts educations are crap and only engineering (their favorite subject) and its like are worth pursuing.
Education, sir, is not job training. If you think that it is—and I’ll bet that you do—why not dispense with universities and open up little institutes of the “hard sciences” wherein one is taught, say, chemical engineering knowledge and that only. We could then eliminate all classes having to do with Western history and culture, English, and other bothersome disciplines that don’t return big bucks for the time spent on them.
I am an example of someone who got his initial degree in political science (yes, yes, I know it’s worthless to your way of thinking), but it opened the doors to a professional job and I went on to get an economics degree (which you probably think is OK), and am now retired with my wife, also retired. Together we have a retirement income of $95,000 a year. Not shabby.
” the only way to get your foot in the door is by taking an extended unpaid internship that allows your employer to evaluate your capabilities and job performance before offering you a permanent job.”
Rightly too. Jobs don’t exist soley for someoen to be able to live lavishly.
Certainly not, but lets be frank and these students need ot understand that while their goals are honorable and honest, you can’t just step into a well paying job with just a degree and no experience that can be verified. For a while, students like this need to understand that they can’t start out at the top anywhere and they can’t just work an internship and get paid for doing every little thing.
And the "majority" kids pay extra so their loans can be used to provide "scholarships" to "minority" students, most of whom can't even read at an eighth grade level AFTER graduating from college.
The "education" system has been perverted to something that is... dare I say it?
UNSUSTAINABLE.
And I bet you would have made it no matter what path you took.
PS - I have three degrees.
But my point was, in reading each of the snippets from the 5 students interviewed, while they expressed some issues about not getting paid, or promises from potential employers that were never meant to be kept, all seemed to understand fully what a great opportunity an internship can provide. I think there IS a mindset of young people who think they should graduate and immediately occupy the CEO’s office. Those are the ones least likely to succeed.
I’ve always respected those who started with the total schlock jobs. Especially in family-owned companies. My bil had his kids work at a company business. Each one started out with janitorial jobs: sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, etc. He’d have them as receptionist/ salesman/bookkeeper, etc. They had to develop some empathy for every employee they would one day manage. And understand the value of a buck earned. Didn’t hurt ‘em at all.
I thank you for the kind compliment.
Since my wife and I have no children, I have not been following it but I am shocked at the monstrous increase in educational costs to students since 1980. You are surely correct in attributing this to the easy availability of student loans. And I will grant that many of these young people have no business being in college in the first place. I saw some when I was a freshman; they weren’t there when I was a sophomore...my college did not tolerate those who could not do college work.
With any amount of luck, this unbelievable growth in costs and the concomitant transfer of wealth, as it were, to minority students will collapse upon itself, and colleges and universities can get back to what they used to be.
Alas, that is not the case any more.
They just run them through "remedial" classes.
It's all about the Benjamins.
Not always. In fact, most internships (good ones, anyway) are restricted to current students.
To say nothing of the fact that internships are mandatory all over the place (at least they were at the school I went to, and I didn’t exactly go to Yale)
When it comes to political interns, I think its very unhealthy, because it discourages people who aren't from well-off backgrounds from being able to get on to the political career ladder. Not to mention the fact that recruiting tommorow's political class only from kids straight out of university with rich parents backing them up is a not a great way of giving us politicians who actually understand what it is like to be an ordinary person dealing with issues that ordinary people have to face when they are deciding on policies which will affect us...
And unless this unpaid internship is part-time, how is the internee supposed to do it, if they don't have parents able and willing to pay their living costs in the meantime?
I don't think interns should be paid riches, but they should at least be paid enough to pay for some basic room and board whilst they work out their internship...
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