The internship trap

The New York Times has reported on the exploitive nature and dubious legality of unpaid internships. Yet the newspaper recently issued a call for its own unpaid social-media intern. By doing so when jobs are already scarce, isn't the Times helping to widen the class gap among young Americans?

The Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project has found that 65 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of wage-earning families remain within the bottom two-fifths, while about a third of those born into the middle class drop into the lower classes. How does this relate to internships? With youth unemployment near 18 percent, the market has become more competitive, and companies are sifting through stacks of resumés looking for applicable experience. Applicants with relevant internships have better chances.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reported last year that 40 percent of new private-sector hires out of college were pulled from in-house internships. Of the kids lucky enough to get internships, 67 percent went on to get offers of full-time employment.

The problem with internships is that many are unpaid and therefore unavailable to college students who must earn money for tuition and other obligations. This might seem less pressing if unpaid interns were at least rewarded with course credit, eliminating some future tuition payments. But more than 40 percent of colleges do not require unpaid internships to award academic credit, making them too risky and frivolous for low-income students.

Meanwhile, unpaid internships save the private sector an estimated $600 million annually, according to Ross Perlin, the author of Intern Nation. While the U.S. Department of Labor does require unpaid internships to fit six criteria to be legal, those regulations are rarely enforced. Last year, the Economic Policy Institute recommended an overhaul of the rules to ensure that companies aren't taking unfair advantage of free labor.

Short of systemic changes, there is some hope for underprivileged students. Several colleges, including New York University, William and Mary, and the University of Southern California, have begun to offer grants to unpaid-internship applicants with demonstrated financial need. Howard University offers free campus housing to students who take unpaid internships, provided they also work 10 to 15 hours a week for the university.

The University of Pennsylvania's Kelly Writers House, where I work, has recognized a particular shortage of paid internships in the cultural sector. To address it, we raise funds for RealArts@Penn, which awards stipends to students taking otherwise unpaid internships at partner organizations around the country, including Rolling Stone and Nickelodeon.

But these patchwork efforts do not address the structural inequities. That will require serious attention from the top.

In his most recent State of the Union address, President Obama suggested that colleges become "career centers" that serve as engines for employment. In an effort to increase aid to low-income families, he promised to double the work-study positions available to students over the next five years.

College does need to be accessible, and students do need to be employable. But when it comes to ensuring both, we can do better. What if those work-study dollars went instead to stipends for low-income students who are chosen for unpaid internships? That would be an efficient way to create more opportunities, improve the lot of underprivileged students, and kick-start the nation's flagging economic mobility.

We can lament the lack of educational access, economic mobility, and class parity all we want, but until we deal with the connections among them, we can look forward to more of the same.

Arielle Brousse is assistant director for development at Penn's Kelly Writers House.