On the engineering side, I always paid interns minimum wage, but they could be a money sink, too. The only bright spot was when you found 'the one' and were able to move them up the payscale because they were good.
/johnny
I completely agree with the headline. Let the interns pay the employers for the skills and experience that they would otherwise be getting at no charge.
What a stupid writer!
Abolish the unpaid internships and watch gender studies, sociology and similar majors wither on the vine.
It is possible to work without producing anything, public employees are adept at this.
I never did find a job that "used" my degree, and I attribute some of that to a distinct lack of work experience.
What the heck, I went into IT instead, and it keeps my bills paid. I can't complain.
Its the same with raising the minimum wage. stores won't hire the same amount of baggers and pay them more, they'll hire half as many and work them harder. Those on the left are uniformly ignorant of basic economics.
Regards,
Cope
My issue in “Unpaid” intenships is that it is legalized extortion. “Wash my car”, or “Get my coffee” is hardly on-the-job training. It’s legalized slavery.
If the intern isn’t worth half or even a quarter the pay-rate that a degreed professional “fresh-out” is worth - fire him, and invest the money in someone worthy of the job.
In my experience, we hire “Interns” at a substancially lower rate of pay than we do Grads without any experience. We assign the “Intern” a series of tasks at a level of sophistication that will determine whether a more permanent job offer is going to await him at the end of the summer.
In “the old days”, it wasn’t unusual for a good peforming Intern, with a positive attitude to be offered not only a job when he graduated, but the final semester “paid for” if he would commit to start at the company at graduation.
The Internship served dual purposes. It gave the company a low-cost “trial” of an Intern’s attitude, committment and capabilities - but it also gave the Intern a glimpse at what the “real world” was like when he graduated.
The “Free” Internship offers none of the benefits these programs used to offer - and advances a form of slavery that will discourage students. And given the quantity of students graduating with a meaningful degree on the decline - it’s very short-sighted.
Now, for graduates in “Women’s Studies” and other non-sensical degrees - what did they expect to do when they graduated? They can serve me dinner, wash my dishes and weed my lawn. But, they should be paid at least minimum wages while they do that.
Let the market decide.
The left is hell-bent to insure that no young people work. have experiences or education outside of their ideological influence.
Everyone must be fully dependent on Big Brother.
Fine, I’ll pay them $2.35 an hour and they earn the tips...
I’ve seen an abusive form of unpaid internship. It has a term of one year.
How convenient. When the term expires, there is a fresh crop of graduates ready to take their places.
Reading the linked article, I noticed how the writer segued from “summer internships” to internships in general.
Many of these unpaid internships are the ONLY way into a desired career field for some people, and they are primarily in urban areas with high costs of living. This limits the pool to those children of the well-to-do who can AFFORD to work for free.
A great way of limiting upward mobility and making sure that everyone in that career is of the same socioeconomic strata.