Buying entry into a career

[firecat]

via moominmuppet

"How Unpaid Internships Perpetuate Rampant Inequality in the US," by Anna Lekas Miller

Excerpt:

Recent graduates, disturbed by the dearth of job opportunities, began to take internships as a last resort to stay competitive in the labor market. Although an internship used to be akin to an apprenticeship—a temporary stint of unpaid, hands-on labor resulting in an eventual job offer—the explosion of both college students and recent graduates taking internships no longer guarantees a paid position. Instead, as more and more young people demonstrated they were willing to supply an unpaid labor force so long as it was framed as an “internship,” internships have become a means for companies and non-profit organizations to re-package once paying jobs and cut corners in a tight economy.

Internships are the new entry-level job—the same duties and basic experience, only this time without compensation or benefits.

Unpaid internships were common when I was in college in the early 1980s, but I refused to take one. I had an idea that it was important for me to work for a paycheck. Nevertheless, my parents and I paid for my first career job in three ways: (1) I got a bachelor's degree (my parents paid my tuition); (2) I went to the Denver Publishing Institute summer program (my parents paid my tuition); (3) I took an entry level publishing job that paid $10K a year to start, which didn't cover my expenses (and my expenses didn't include student loans). However, the job did have health benefits.

I see that the long and venerable tradition of paying for entry into a career path continues, although it sounds like it's somewhat worse than it used to be. Another excerpt:

It's becoming more and more expected for college students to have had at least one, if not several, internships by the time they graduate. Students that come from a privileged background, with parents who are willing and able to finance sometimes serial internships, are able to survive in internship culture financially unscathed. Eventually, they intern for long enough to make the connections necessary to break into the white-collar world. But students from lower- or even middle-income backgrounds feel financially stressed taking on unpaid work, but many do anyway to compete with their more privileged peers in the job market.

Comments

[chaos_by_design]

That's pretty awful.

I feel really lucky that I got my first break because I had a work study job where one of the women I worked for liked my work enough to hire me after I graduated. Everyone needs their break, and not everyone has bootstraps to pull themselves up by (that's kind of the nature of needing that first break).

[gmdreia]

The whole nature of entering into the workforce has changed. Many schools now accommodate people who are employees, so in many respects it's possibly better to work your way through - a future lawyer might get into secretarial or clerk work, then get certified as a paralegal, then go to law school. A future computer programmer might do well to do a lower level job in the field.

That said, plenty of people know this stuff, but the average liberal-arts/creative/writing/psychology person -does not know this-. Hell, even some law students don't. It may also be helpful to have a "back up" - which is advice they always tell us creatives, but they don't tell most liberal arts students. If a person won't be qualified to get a job without a degree, they won't be much more qualified with one.

Another mistake that young students frequently make... They don't network while they're still in school. This is one of those areas where school does not teach life skills.

What older students know, that younger ones frequently don't.

It's better to do the crap jobs and free work before the student loan debt starts rolling in, than after.

[evilawyer]

Unpaid internships were around years back when I was in college, but it didn't seem like the "employers" viewed the interns in the same way they viewed "real" workers in that they weren't worked into the productivity and income forecast projections the way they are now. They were viewed more as students who were there to watch how things were done (and to do little support tasks that weren't particularly critical to organizational functioning. Interns in those days were helpful to have around, from the employers perspective, but they weren't going to be making money (or, in the case of non-profits, working as a full-fledged, pull-your-weight worker) for the company as interns. I've talked to a few recent-ish college grads who've held down internships while looking for jobs, and that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. They're looked at and factored into company strategy as though they were paid employees, or so it seems to me.

[maize]

I friend of mine graduated quite some time ago and worked a long series of unpaid internships. By long series, I mean, many, many, many years. None had any opportunity to turn into a paid position. Eventually, she started getting paying positions, but by "paying," they required extremely extended hours and didn't pay anywhere even remotely near a living wage. She eventually went back to school for a Masters, hoping that would make a difference, and for quite a while it didn't seem to at all, and most of the positions available to her were still unpaid internships. She's finally gotten a paying position that pays something like a reasonable-but-not-great wage. It's taken her... maybe ten or twelve years to get to that point. It's been really depressing to see. She does come from a privileged background, and has been (and still is) living with her parents to facilitate a lot of this. She also has a mountain of debt, including student loans that are more or less never going to be repaid the way things are going at the moment, but also including just creative uses of credit cards and such when she would have to do things like pay for transit or gas or car repairs (or a car) to get to and from jobs that didn't pay anything. I get that she's in an industry that's worse for this than others, but still, it was pretty alarming to see, especially for someone like me, who basically walked out of school and into a decently-paying job.

[firecat]

Ack. Which industry?

[maize]

(Another friend recently posted an unpaid internship just amongst her friends and got no takers, then posted a bitter message later about how people's "true colours" came out with that request, because nobody took her up on it. Note that most of the people she was proposing it to were people who were working in full-time paid positions, many with kids and so on. There is a real sense of entitlement about it among some people in the hiring departments. I've also had the same or other people suggest to me when I've been busy at work that I should get an intern, and when I've told them that I don't have the budget for that, they looked at me as if I had three heads and the idea of actually paying someone was ludicrous. I don't think I'd be comfortable making someone work for me for free.)

[firecat]

I don't think I'd be comfortable making someone work for me for free.

I'm OK with nonprofit organizations having volunteers, but otherwise, ditto.

[maize]

That's a good point. :)

[gmdreia]

You can get work experience doing that, too. Especially if it's a small nonprofit and you ask the director, "can you call me an intern for the sake of my employment references?"

[gmdreia]

Schools should be preparing students for reality - but it doesn't matter, because at 18, only your DREEEEAMZ matter and you don't listen for dick (was there myself). And many of these jobs are not hiring paid employees because there just is not a lot of work in those jobs to begin with. Which indicates a poor occupational outlook. Federal student aid and federal student loans should not cover fields with poor occupational outlooks without the students completing some sort of job skills or career path workshop.

Despite ageism, for once, I notice in school that people in my age group are actually doing better than the traditional age people. The older students (30s and 40s; older but still employable) seem to actually be working in the fields they went back to take degrees in. A few joined my program to retrain or enhance their skills but ended up leaving because of decent job offers. THIS YEAR.

I would tell a young person to do what my working-class-origins mother always drilled into me: ALWAYS have a trade you can fall back on. Spend a year certifying in something that translates to a Real Job(tm) before going to college. Don't let yourself get to college without already having real world experience. It's just as possible to work one's way into a more ideal job as a paid mail clerk than as an unpaid intern.

[gmdreia]

And come to think of it - if I had kids and was in the position to pay for their education - I'd tell them that they get to go to college after spending a year training in something (medical assistant, hairdresser, ANYTHING) and they'd have to research the occupational outlook for it and give real data about employability in those fields.

A year while they do an ROP program or community college trade program, before actually going for a degree, is cheaper than handling boomerang kids with crushing debt.

Then, my class background is different. But I think most upper middle class and rich parents are not necessarily that bright when it comes to preparing their kids for real life, anyway.