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

[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.