<p>Unpaid internships might be the way business is heading more and more these days, but it feeds into the idea of privilege in a way that is particularly distasteful. Unless it’s a part of school as a requirement or a part of a course that a student is taking for credit (which are, in my mind, completely valid), it’s my feeling that the only people who can afford to be unpaid interns are those from wealthy enough families that they can be supported during the term of the internship. This precludes folks from getting these positions if they in any way are economically needy-- which is the great majority of, at the very least, young people. More and more real jobs grow out of these internships and the disparity between the haves and the have nots grows ever wider, because the interns come from “have” families in the first place. It reminds me of the high school kids who pay $3000 to travel to, say, Costa Rica, to do community service with the local sea turtles or rain forest. Colleges’ admissions offices are able to cut through that to understand that wealthy kids’ families are the only ones who can pad their students’ r</p>