Say Anything | Don't go for broke

What’s wrong with unpaid internships? There are lots of things about not being paid for your time and work that are silly, like … not being paid for your time … or your work. The real issue with unpaid internships, though, is that while technically open to the general public, they’re only really available to people who can afford to be unpaid.

Unpaid internships are inherently elitist. They prevent individuals from having equal access to the opportunities that will make them desirable hires in the future.

Unless you live in the city where you want to intern, you need to be able to shell out cash for rent, transportation and the cost of living. Even suburbanites who commute to work have expenses: train tickets don’t buy themselves. If you or your parents aren’t willing to sponsor a $3,000 summer, you can say peace out to Manhattan and hello to three months of feeling trapped in a minimum-wage situation where there is about a 97-percent chance you are smarter than your boss.

After you’re done sucking up an unproductive summer, you’re still behind. The undergrads with internships become the graduates who get jobs. By the time hiring starts, of course, you can’t call it elitism anymore — it’s just giving the job to the most qualified candidate. But the process by which that candidate became most qualified is one that favors wealthier students.

I get that we’re in a recession. But you know who could use some money during economic tough times? Broke college students paying thousands in tuition. While smaller businesses might not have budgets to pay interns, I find it hard to believe that big companies can’t afford to give interns a couple hundred bucks a week.

That money isn’t much to a major corporation, but it makes a huge difference to an intern. Two hundred fifty dollars a week probably covers a person’s rent and would have a profound effect on the way interns approach work. An internship, paid or unpaid, is an incredible opportunity. A person should feel grateful just to be there, even if while there said person’s responsibilities fall into the filing-copying-stapling category. If you’re getting paid to staple, it’s no big deal.

When you aren’t being compensated for your time, though, it’s tough to keep up an appreciative attitude. On a slow day, when the whole internet is not enough to keep you occupied, even the most saintly of interns is bound to think, “… and they aren’t even paying me to be here.” Effort lags and work quality drops. With interns, as with the rest of life, you get what you pay for. And it wouldn’t take a significant salary to prevent that problem. Free lunch would do the trick, honestly. And a MetroCard would be nice.

Students can apply for fellowships and grants to subsidize their expenses should internships be unpaid. But there are only so many of those grants to go around, and they aren’t always well publicized.

“At least interns get credit,” you might be thinking. Let’s have a moment for Penn’s idea of “credit.” I have received three letters from the Penn Credit Powers That Be, which, as if by magic, simultaneously absolve my employers of any slave-driving legal issues and do negative nothing for me academically. It’s literally a piece of paper that says: “Hi employer, we know our student is interning for you. Seeing as we barely acknowledge Advanced Placement scores, you can rest assured all we’ll do is slap a smiley face on this girl’s transcript for her hard work this summer!”

For every positive thing they offer, unpaid internships are still lose-lose. Students who get internships lose money; students who can’t afford them lose invaluable experience and vital networking opportunities. Employers lose out on excellent interns and future full-time hires. Be a winner. Pay your interns.

Jessica Goldstein is a College senior from Berkeley Heights, N.J. Her e-mail address is goldstein@theDP.com. Say Anything appears on alternate Wednesdays.

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