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Lots of companies now just bring in a slew of fresh interns every few months to be their free, low-skill labor force. It’s part of an ugly business model and once some companies in a market practice it it is prohibitively expensive for their competitors not to.

Coming up with more government regulations and rules against internships is just more government solution in search of a problem. The type of work that most interns do in companies is menial, necessary work that adds little or no value but is needed in order for operations to flow. Having interns do this work (whether modestly paid or not) while they get a chance to learn about the company and the industry is beneficial to both the company and the intern or there would not be a market for these positions.

At my company, interns are paid a modest wage, but the interns (who pretty much have to be top-notch college upperclassmen with a GPA of 3.5 or higher) consider the experience to be invaluable for the skills they learn and the insights into the industry they gain.

Perhaps you believe that the government isn't doing enough to regulate internships and that the government is better at looking out for these young students and future workforce contributers than the free market. If so, then by all means get out there and lobby and campaing for expanded government regulation in the labor market.

I’d even the playing field. If free or sub-minimum wage is okay in some circumstances, it should be okay in all. If anything it is the usual culmination of unintended consequences: you slap on minimum wages for higher than new, unskilled employees are worth, supposedly to protect the poor, and you end up creating barriers so that upper-class kids have still more of a leg up than those who can’t afford to work absolutely free. My preferred route would be less regulation, not more, but right now we’ve got the usual, government-intruded upon system that is getting to be less and less fair.

The type of work that most interns do in companies is menial, necessary work that adds little or no value but is needed in order for operations to flow.

Yes, and that describes a janitor or a member of the cleaning crew to a tee, yet they are paid. Not a lot, but they get some sort of renumeration.

At my company, interns are paid a modest wage, but the interns (who pretty much have to be top-notch college upperclassmen with a GPA of 3.5 or higher) consider the experience to be invaluable for the skills they learn and the insights into the industry they gain.

And that's the way it should be. They aren't skilled yet, so they don't make much. But they *ARE* earning something for the work performed, limited as it might be.