<p>By law, internships cannot pay wages.</p>
<p>Just had a look at our internship page: excellent compensation, furnished corporate apartments (student pays nothing), company pays for car or bicycle rentals, travel expenses to and from school, and other amenities. Maybe this is treated legally as a full-time job with the tag of internship because it is summer/temporary work.</p>
<p>Its semantics. Maybe not “wages” whatever that definition is, but they can pay an hourly stipend, whatever you want to call it. Both my s’s did.</p>
<p>Here’s some info on “unpaid” traineeships/internships <a href=“http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm[/url]”>http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm</a> and on some companies who dont meet the standard <a href=“http://www.statepress.com/2010/04/28/some-unpaid-internships-break-federal-laws/[/url]”>http://www.statepress.com/2010/04/28/some-unpaid-internships-break-federal-laws/</a></p>
<p>I have seen several grants for internship opportunities that cover plane tickets and living expenses, I am not sure about wages…, it is usually a fixed amount of money. The grants are linked to internships, you apply not for an internship but for an internship grant.</p>
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<p>We know a number of current medical school students who did NOT do internships, mainly because they were taking courses during the summers. However they did do medically related volunteer work (e.g. EMT) or shadowed someone in the medical profession.</p>
<p>You do NOT have to do an internship to get accepted in medical school.</p>
<p>I agree that it is semantics. Back thirty years ago my grad school program in public administration required all students to have a paid internship between their first and second year of the program. Unpaid did count. Virtually all of those internships were working in government due to the nature of the program. I did mine with the state department working in an embassy overseas. It was called an internship and it was highly compensated. If that compensation was anything other than wages I don’t remember it looking that way when I did my tax returns.</p>
<p>S’s offer letter says his title is “Summer Intern”. He is to be paid an hourly wage plus a one-time fringe benefit expected to cover housing costs.</p>
<p>I have grad students who frequently do internships for credit and the regulations for them to get these internships approved are very strict. There is paperwork for the site to fill out which spells out at length what the student will be doing, how they will be evaluated and what learning criteria the internship meets. Then I receive paperwork at the end of the internship and at a midpoint and the student and I meet before awarding credit. If this internship is on the approved list, then it appears that one of two things are happening: One individual is coordinating the program and telling the university one thing while in reality doing something else with the interns; or there are different people doing the university paperwork and the intern coordination and the intern coordinator is not sticking to the agreement. </p>
<p>If it were my child, I would instruct them to print out anything (like an e-mail) that they have gotten from the site’s intern coordinator which spells out the duties, and then send this to their university’s intern advisor with a simple question: “I’m confused as to how the description in the e-mail meshes with the learning objectives that my advisor and I agreed upon. I don’t think it does. What do you suggest I do?” Then let the university’s intern person handle it from there.</p>
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If I’m benefitting intellectually or otherwise from this internship why should I by law be required to be compensated?</p>
<p>My understanding is that you can’t use an intern to do things for which someone else would be compensated. (In other words, you can’t ask an intern to fill in for a secretary who is out on maternity leave and not pay the intern what you would have had to pay a temp.) This is to keep people from using interns as unpaid temps. If there’s a precedent that the individual who does X gets paid this amount of money, then you can’t ignore that precedent and just stick an intern into that slot. The idea is supposed to be that there is a difference between the experience of being an intern and the experience of temping. The internship is supposed to be crafted by someone who starts with a set of learning objectives and then chooses the activities to be assigned to the individual so that they mesh with these objectives – as opposed to, say, “The phone is ringing. WOuld you mind answering it?”</p>
<p>What is supposed to be done and what is done are two different things.</p>
<p>In various unpaid and paid internships, D was in charge or press releases that were sent to either clients or put on a wesite.</p>
<p>She did research on projects in development.</p>
<p>She was responsible for weekly reports that were forwarded to a main office’s marketing department.</p>
<p>She transcribed meeting notes.</p>
<p>She organized video libraries and re-organized filing systems.</p>
<p>She worked very independently on projects she was assigned and reported back to the various managers who assigned them.</p>
<p>All of this sounds very much like the responsibility given to someone in an entry level paid job.</p>
<p>I am thankful for the opportunities these internships provided and would have her do them all again…however, they do sound a lot like unpaid labor to me!</p>
<p>The OP’s child’s internship would not pass muster at my school. We specifically require that value-added professional experiences be an integral part of the internship (although we do permit a modicum of filing etc).</p>
<p>“If I’m benefitting intellectually or otherwise from this internship why should I by law be required to be compensated?”</p>
<p>Because that could be argued for any job under the sun. Why pay anyone?</p>
<p>Unpaid internships are NOT illegal. On the contrary, the law specifically protects them. But the law also says clearly that if the employer experiences an immediate gain from the work being done greater than the costs to him/her, it isn’t a legal internship, and the work must be compensated. Otherwise, it is simply a form of theft.</p>
<p>OP here. </p>
<p>I want to thank everyone for their feedback. </p>
<p>Of course his college has an internship search site on the web. This particular opportunity came from the college internship source. Apparently they have interns in several departments. My impression, which could be wrong, is that this particular department manager is unfamiliar with internship specifics. Nevertheless, I am not inclined to finance a summer in NYC called an internship that ought to be compensated. I can’t imagine that when he runs this job description past his advisor that it’s going to earn his needed work experience credit.</p>
<p>My understanding of the compensation regulations (for paid internships) were that a hiring employer either had to offer compensation or ‘course credit.’ I was under the impression that most schools prohibit employers who are de facto issuing course credit from also paying students, so this is how the paid/course credit/unpaid dichotomies developed.</p>
<p>Most folks I know now who hire interns pay them and refuse to do unpaid situations because of concerns over labor law problems - not just these types of regulations but also for things like worker’s comp, insurance, etc. I know that we can’t have a non-student “volunteer”/“shadow”/help in our office unless we officially hire them as an intern (for stipend or hourly). </p>
<p>Most I know also pay as “stipends” to avoid potential future litigation over wage-and-hour claims. That’s the reality from the employer side, at least.</p>
<p>Currently, I am an intern with the federal government. I applied to their intern program. I am paid hourly. My official title is “student trainee” though, so perhaps that makes a difference.</p>
<p>Good news here…S2 called today to say he got the internship he interviewed for last week! He’ll be working in a county sheriff’s dept.(Criminal Justice major). </p>
<p>We feel as if a huge burden has been lifted from our shoulders…so happy.<br>
It is unpaid. He gets nine credit hours for it. We had to send the university $50 this week for liability insurance. S2 says that’s in case he burns the building down, the employer can’t try to sue the university. DH says…just another money maker for the univ. At this point I don’t even care. He has an internship…yay!</p>
<p>Phew, PackMom!</p>
<p>Congrats, PackMom. That is fantastic news. I know exactly how stressed you have been feeling and now you can relax knowing you have a soon-to-be college graduate.</p>
<p>So happy for your son, PackMom. That was a high-stakes internship hunt! What a relief.</p>