It's no secret that the top summer internships are often unpaid.
But what's less known is that many students must pay their universities to receive the academic credit that some employers - wary of labor laws governing unpaid internships-require as a condition of the job.
When the expense of academic credit is added to lost wages, summer housing, transportation, wardrobe overhauls and expensive city living, it can be difficult for interns to maintain a positive outlook.
"We will never give academic credit for something that's not academic," said College Director of Academic Advising Diane Frey, noting that no Ivy League school grants credit for an internship without an academic complement.
The College will place a "notation" on students' transcripts indicating that they have completed an internship.
The policy, which was instituted approximately four years ago, was designed to satisfy the legal concerns of non-paying employers, who are frequently found in the communications, fashion, arts, politics and social services sectors, according to director of Career Services Patricia Rose.
"It usually works," she said of the notation.
College senior Jessica Reich, who used the notation to satisfy the academic credit requirement at Modern Bride Magazine last summer, suggested the policy might work as a result of vague communication between the University and employers, who are under the impression that their interns are receiving credit.
In Frey's standard letter to non-paying employers, she writes that "the internship credit will be noted on [the student's] transcript" - a statement that could be misinterpreted as academic credit, although employers are able to access the detailed policy online.
"I don't think I was ever really nervous that [the magazine] would find out [that I wasn't receiving credit], but I think that if they had known Penn's policy, they wouldn't have liked it," Reich said.
One option for Communications majors pursuing unpaid summer internships is to enroll in the department's "Communication Internship Seminar," in which students meet virtually with a professor on Blackboard to "analyze the communication processes they observe firsthand in their internships," according to the course description.
But the online course comes with a heavy price tag: the fee of one credit-unit during the summer session at Penn amounts to $2,741, plus a "general fee" that could range from $180 to $250, according to the College of General Studies Web site.
Some students believe the course and the credit are worth the price.
"I probably wouldn't have thought about [my internship] as much or as critically through the Annenberg perspective if I hadn't taken the class," said College senior Ali Wiezbowski, who enrolled in the seminar last summer to complement her internship at NBC Universal.
"It was frustrating because it was a really expensive summer, but because I was getting academic credit, that justified paying for it," she explained.
But other students detect a paradox in the logic of the arrangement, which pushes unpaid interns even further into the world of debt.
"It would be like paying to be unpaid," said Reich, explaining why she chose to accept the transcript notation instead of registering for credit.
Rose said the happiest solution for students and the University alike would be for employers to honor undergraduate labor with a paycheck, or at the very least provide a stipend for small costs such as transportation and lunch money.
"I wish companies would pay our students because their work has a real monetary value," she said.
