As graduation appears on the horizon for many students, so does the desperation for real-world experience that puts them above other students in the job hunt.  Internships serve as a gateway between college and the working world, but most are unpaid, posing undesirable obstacles for students. 

 

Recently, an NPR article, “Internships: Low-paid, Unpaid or Just Plain Illegal?” addressed some repercussions some students face when at an unpaid internship.

 

In addition to the lack of monetary benefit, time consumption makes it difficult for some to fit the internship into their already busy academic lives.

 

UNC Wilmington student Katherine Wilkie is studying communications and worked as a Social Media Manager/Advertising intern with Karmic Fury Records. She hopes to work for record labels like Hopeless, Rise and Fearless Records. Getting real-world experience is crucial to her competitiveness when she graduates and while interning at Karmic Fury was an overall good experience, she had difficulty making money.

 

“I couldn’t apply for a job because I had 18 hours of classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then between those days I was interning at odd hours, leaving me with no room to even try to get a job,” said Wilkie. “The internship was in Hampstead, requiring me to use a lot of gas every week just to get there and back, which left me completely broke with no way to earn an income.”   

 

UNCW’s Assistant Director of Employment, Mike Phillips, holds a different perspective on the matter. He believes that an internship, whether paid or not, does not pose as a consequence to students.

 

Internships are good, well-planned applied learning experiences that supplement a student’s knowledge learned in the classroom, said Phillips. 

 

The benefits of an internship is can only be determined by what the students takes away from it, said Phillips and monetary compensation plays no part in how valuable the internship is for the company or student.

 

The Fair Labor Standards Act prevents any company’s exploitation of unpaid internships, and so companies are “under increased scrutiny to do the proper thing.”

 

Additionally, Phillips affirms that availability of paid internships has seen a slight increase. 

 

Tim Bass, Internship Coordinator for the Creative Writing Department, sees that all internships offer some form of payment. Although unpaid internships don’t “put money in your pocket, gas in the tank, or pay your auto insurance,” they do offer course credit.   

 

The creative writing department offers internships with a dozen agencies-only one of which is a paid position at WHQR radio station.

 

“The way I see it, you into an internship, you work hard, and they’re not going to want to lose you. So they’re going to figure out a way to keep you there,” Bass said.    

 

Bass also encourages students to foster their own connections if the standard channels do not fit their criteria. With that in mind, he also advises students to work with their internship coordinator to prevent any sort of exploitation.

 

“You always want to go through the university apparatus,” Bass said.  “It’s gotta be done in advance, approved, and sanctioned by the university. Otherwise, you’re a volunteer.” 

 

Juggling classes, work and internships make for an limited time in a day. The pressure of coordinating between all these responsibilities eventually reduced Wilkie’s confidence.

 

“I feel about as comfortable with transitioning into the working world as I did before the internship, which is hardly at all,” Wilkie said.

 

Bass recommended not settling for an internship if the students feel dissatisfied with it. It will reduce the overall learning and productivity benefits associated with the internship. As far as monetary benefits are concerned, Bass explained that if students must be compensated in this sense, then they should seek out such opportunities.

 

“Is the money so important that I just got to pass this up and find something that actually pays,” Bass said.  “We all have to face that dilemma at some point.”

 

“Draw a line at a certain point,” Wilkie advises future interns. “I think my biggest life lesson from this experience was that in unpaid internships it is easy to be taken advantage of and that you have to be able to stand up for yourself and put a foot down.”