Written by Blake Mathews
For many college students, summer vacation has gone the way of recess and Saturday morning cartoons. Growing up and inching closer to the professional world means the months between semesters are now a critical time, a window of opportunity to gain experience through an internship.
But that window of opportunity may be shutting soon, as the US Department of Labor recently announced its intent to start cracking down on the most common type of internship: the unpaid kind.
If an employer want to offer an unpaid internship, there are six federal criteria that the internship must meet. They are, briefly: the intern’s experience must resemble vocational school training; the internship must be for the benefit of the intern; the intern must not do work normally assigned to paid employees; the employer must not receive any direct material benefit from the intern’s training; the intern is necessarily promised a job when the internship is over; and the employer makes it clear that the internship will be unpaid.
Nancy J. Leppink, director of the DOL’s wage and hour division, told the New York Times that most unpaid internships fail to meet at least one of the criteria.
“If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law,” she said.
The emphasis on the criteria comes at a time when both unemployment and the number of unpaid internships are climbing. Labor officials in several states have expressed concern that companies may be displacing paid employees with interns who will work for nothing more than college credit.
Harding Career Center director Deb Bashaw said she believes in paying workers for their time. But, as she tells students who come through her office looking for internships, not all unpaid work is exploitation.
“Would I do an unpaid internship? If it was a really good internship that was going to get me some good experience and would look really good on my resume, yeah I would,” Bashaw said. “Do I think it’s right for the employer to do that? No! But on the flip side, it could help you get a job later on.”
For some majors, however, internships are not a “could help” kind of experience. Dr. Jack Shock of the College of Communication said students in creative and media fields – public relations, journalism and advertising, to name a few – depend on internships to get hired at all.
“We practically invented internships. It’s been a part of our culture for decades,” Shock said.
The DOL’s crackdown would supposedly force employers to pay the majority of interns, a move Shock said many companies in the communications industry can not afford. They would sooner stop offering internships altogether. For communication students, who have to complete a 240-hour internship in order to graduate, unpaid for a summer beats undergraduate for another year.
Shock said that, while some employers do take unethical advantage of interns, most unpaid internships provide students with contacts and experience that they could not get otherwise. Demanding payment or confronting an employer with the six criteria is a great way to end an internship early, Shock said, because interns willing to work for free are in high supply.
“I always tell my students, ‘You have to count on this being unpaid. If it’s paid, then that is a bonus,'” he said.
Katie Culp and Taelor Aebi are two communication students who have broadcast journalism internships lined up for the summer. The job is high profile – working with Fox News in New York City – but the pay is nonexistent. Still, they said the expense of living in New York and working for free is more than paid for by the experience.
“We get to see the people who are the best at their jobs, the best in the nation … that’s enough for me,” Culp said.
“The contacts you make are worth more than the money,” Aebi added.
Both students will be working at a professional level, writing stories, going out with news crews and booking guests, but they said nothing they do is something someone else would normally be paid to do. They’re also under expert supervision, which satisfies some of the DOL criteria, but even if Fox did not follow all the rules, Culp said she would not bring it up.
“I just think it’s something that you do and you suck it up,” Aebi said about working for free in the broadcast journalism business. “From there that opens one door, and then the next door opens, and the next door opens.”
But not all students can afford to go a summer without a paying job. For communication majors who cannot afford an unpaid internship, Shock said that some companies do pay their interns, but the firms, stations and agencies that look the best on resumes know they do not have to.
