<p>But I doubt it takes hundreds of dollars worth of work to add the extra line/fax the papers.</p>
<p>I think it’s a ripoff, plain and simple, especially since OP is doing 99.9999% of the work himself - finding the internship, doing the internship, etc. Whether or not being in the university helped him get the job is irrelevant - he’s already paid for the other classes where he was actually TAUGHT something. </p>
<p>I think the whole concept of a REQUIRED internship for credit is messed up, honestly. A required internship, fine, a recommended internship, fine, but an “intership where you pay US” is just, sorry, stupid.</p>
<p>I noticed “3 credits for 10 hours of work”- My organic chemistry labs were 8 and 9 hours of in lab time for 2 credits, plus homework for the courses- still the same today. Hard to take some other courses when a whole morning or afternoon is taken up by one class.</p>
<p>And we have 5 or 6 other requirements that no “free” things. We have 4 “Career Linkages” requirements that for at least one we had to meet with an advisor from the Career office. It’s ridiculus the things the universities do to make money “as a requirement.”</p>
<p>I had to do several semesters of clinical rotation for my nursing degree. It was a lot of work on my part as well as on the part of my nurse preceptors at the hospital. I was not paid, of course, even though I did a lot of physical work caring for patients. I paid full tuition for those semesters. However, our instructors were still quite involved with those clinicals as they were on site when we were there, available to help out/answer questions, etc. Actually, given the hours the profs. put in, they should have charged more than the normal tuition. And we should have been paid a pittance for our work at least. I just figured it was the price of some valuable education and training.</p>
<p>Similarly you don’t have to pay to transfer credit from other universities.</p>
<p>The assumption would be that the university did not use its resources to give you those credits - the extra money it would take to process that kind of thing is very neglible.</p>
<p>An internship charged at the rate of a 6 credit course is just ludicrous. This entire thread makes me sick, seeing how many parents say “Doesn’t matter what the university gives YOU in a class, you always owe THEM”</p>
<p>Not so. You are the paying customer. You should get your money’s worth.</p>
<p>I don’t think an internship that a student FOUND ON HIS OWN should be paid for. End of story. Plenty of students in college everywhere are getting internships at no cost, and internships that actually pay THEM.</p>
<p>*An internship charged at the rate of a 6 credit course is just ludicrous. *</p>
<p>I agree…The school is treating the internship as a cash cow. Why stop at 6 credits??? Why not say it’s 10 credits (or more)? The designation of 6 credits is purely arbitrary. The school could designate it as 1 credit and get a few bucks to cover the “processing”.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I see the problem. If you are getting 6 credits toward your degree for the internship, then that’s 6 fewer credits you have to take/pay for later. You’re not paying them to find or monitor the internship, you’re paying for them to count it toward your education and award you 6 credits for having successfully completed it.</p>
<p>I don’t quite understand your logic. See, our program already goes over the minimum credit requirement to graduate. I believe I will end up with 128 credits I believe with 120 being required by the university. So even if the internship credit was cut out or reduced, we’d still have enough to graduate. </p>
<p>And others have made a good point too about transfer credits. I didn’t have to pay for my transfer credits to be added. It really isn’t that different…</p>
<p>“you’re paying for them to count it toward your education and award you 6 credits for having successfully completed it”</p>
<p>Why does this seem to be the motto on this thread?? No, that’s NOT what you pay universities for, for the love of God. You pay them to render you a service. Ex., have a professor teach you material, etc. Just like you don’t pay them to count AP or transfer credits towards your degree, you shouldn’t pay them to count an internship you found and completed on your own towards a degree.</p>
<p>Well, if you only want to pay for what you get, maybe your tuition should be less if you have a TA teach a class/lab; or what about that new professor that doesn’t have twenty years under his/her belt… he/she doesn’t have the experience a tenured one does, so maybe you’re not getting your money’s worth. What about the class that has to be cancelled several times during a semester (weather, illness… whatever)… did you get your money’s worth for that? What about students who do not take advantage of teacher’s office hours? Should they pay less because they aren’t taking advantage of a service offered?</p>
<p>Listen, whether your school charges for one hour, or six… or none for an internship, every school has a right to set their own fees. The same goes with many, many other fees that schools arbitrarily set and collect money for. Do you really want an itemized bill of every service you get while a student?</p>
<p>So I found out last night when I was talking to a student who just graduated from our program. This isn’t new. Last year, the president of the university tried to cancel our program’s internships unless the professor agreed to supervise them for free. In the past, he had been paid like it was a class.</p>
<p>It is strictly a money-making scheme by our university. I can’t wait to get the $#$# out of here… they’ll be lucky to see another dime from me after I graduate.</p>
<p>My oldest D is student teaching this semester. She keeps asking why she has to pay tuition when she’s working! (Of course, it’s not “she” who is paying the tuition!!)</p>
<p>I agree that it seems that what the college is doing is a ripoff. The college should at least be providing an internship advisor (who should be paid for doing this) and should be giving the students help with obtaining their internships. That’s what’s the norm when colleges require internships. The journalism school where I used to teach didn’t require internships, but did provide an internship coordinator, who was paid for providing such services.</p>
<p>Teriwtt, that was quite possibly the most ridiculous argument I’ve ever heard.</p>
<p>My friend actually took a summer class during which the prof said, “They’re not paying me enough for this, so I don’t care about any of you and refuse to actually teach this class” and then proceeded to show up late to class every day, and base the class entirely around students teaching out of the textbook, never saying a word. You best believe my friend got offered a refund AND credit to take another summer class.</p>
<p>I disagree that the university has a right to do what they want, i.e. have profs who never show up for class. To a certain extent you should know what you’re getting into (ex. almost all universities have TA’d classes, so don’t expect to never have a TA teaching; it snows in your part of the world, so expect a snow day, etc.). But don’t tell me before you entered university you checked into every single class in your major (if you even knew what your major was at that point!) to make sure it was actually a class? You EXPECT to take classes for your credit hour money - there are certain basic things a university (or any institution) is expected to provide, and that is an adequate service for your money. You don’t go to a mechanic and say you want your car fixed, and then when he says all he did was stare at it, shrug your shoulders and say, Well, I guess he has a right to charge whatever he wants…***. Lol.</p>
<p>I do believe most schools operate as Northstarmom described, where either they provide an exceptional service if they’re going to charge you for an internship (i.e. place you in it, for example), or don’t require a for-credit internship at all but still offer you an advisor or career center.</p>
<p>Are you allowed to count transfer units toward your requirements, OP? If so, check and see if a local cc or a cc near the site of the internship has an internship course that they’ll allow you to take. If your uni will accept the units, this should give you a much less expensive alternative.</p>
<p>I also suggest getting a group of students together and complaining to the dean. If the dean doesn’t respond well, then tell the college newspaper and have them do a story on it. Colleges do respond to this kind of pressure – if there’s a large enough and vociferous enough group.</p>