<p>TempeMom–that’s different. They get credit hours. Like student teachers, who pay for a semester of working (under supervision) with actual students in an actual school.</p>
<p>An analogy to the disappointing movie industry internship would be if the student teacher, instead of experience with students, got experience making coffee and photocopies and cleaning the teachers lounge. Not what you signed up for.</p>
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<p>You might think about this a different way: some (elite) colleges have dropped class credit for internships because the academic-types don’t consider such classes ‘academic’ enough.</p>
<p>If all internships have to be paid, we will see a thread in here one day titled “The death of the Internship.” It will be based on a future NY Times article about the severe shortage of internships and the negative impact on minority and low income college students. This future article will have a chart showing how rich white kids at upper tier schools get the vast majority of paid internships leading to better jobs at graduation with higher starting salaries. Then we will debate the income inequality in starting salaries endlessly.</p>
<p>Let the fun begin!!!</p>
<p>Besides, I always thought that the purpose of an internship was to get some real life experience.</p>
<p>A crappy internship is about as close to real life as it gets since most jobs are crappy jobs working for crappy bosses putting in crappy hours for crappy pay.</p>
<p>Am I lying? Can I get an amen!!</p>
<p>Unethical and illegal.</p>
<p>We don’t let people work for below the minimum wage. Except interns. It destroys jobs (1 entry level position replaced with three interns by season), depresses wages, makes internships actually more worthless (the ‘experience’ is BS even if it’s the White House - here are sooooooo many unemployed immediate-former White House interns out there), and it’s just immoral.</p>
<p>Abolish the practice and crack down ruthlessly on those who do it just as much as those who illegal withhold their workers’ just pay.</p>
<p>P.S. As someone who has worked on non-profits on a macro-level/as a sector, the whole thing about them ‘pinching pennies’ is the worst BS I’ve ever heard. Most of them are running bigger profits than a lot of small businesses.</p>
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<p>Ever hear of ‘market failure’?</p>
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<p>Or start your own business. Even in something like filmmaking, the necessary tools have become so cheap that almost anyone can participate: Make some short (2-minute) commercial videos for local businesses for a few hundred bucks each to put on YouTube and, once you’re able to make a living, use your spare time to film a documentary or original movie script, like Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity.</p>
<p>The odds of becoming a big filmmaker are against you either way, but if you build your own business you have a reasonable chance of at least making a living in the field that you love.</p>
<p>Niether unethical nor immoral. Just an exchange of value in the eyes of the involved. Last I heard nobody was forced to be an intern. Except maybe in med school.</p>
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Med school interns get paid</p>
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<p>I’m unsure of what you’re trying to say. I never stated that schools NEED to do anything, but rather, should work with internships and create some sort of program that allows a stipend or pay for students. Especially students that work to pay off tuition. </p>
<p>I’m not sure how I can find a different line of work – as if taking a different internship might actually pay me? Or do you mean my paying job that gets me through school?</p>
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My school and major requires at least one internship to graduate. In a way, I am forced to be an intern.</p>
<p>Have you considered looking for other career directions that you would like to do but where interns and entry-level employees are paid?</p>
<p>My school and major requires at least one internship to graduate. In a way, I am forced to be an intern.</p>
<p>Then should should help find one for you. What school/major?</p>
<p>@gator88ne wrote “The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded.”</p>
<p>This is the major area that employees violate. Internships are meant to be training. Doing tasks such as office work (making copies) or other tasks (getting coffee for people, delivering ) is for the benefit of the employer and really isn’t training.</p>
<p>Hint–college grads starting at firms often have to make copies and even get coffee.You dont start with an asst these days. You are the asst.</p>
<p>Quite the society we have become. Unlimited amounts of government and private student loans have fueled tuition increases to astronomical levels, forcing most middle class students to take out large loans to fund their educations at usurious interest rates (compared to the cost of that money to the banks). We then force kids who are burdened by these loans to take jobs for no pay so they can get “experience” and hopefully a future job, despite the fact 50% or so of recent college graduates are either unemployed or employed in jobs not requiring a college degree. And we expect our society to thrive into the future??? Will the last man standing please turn out the lights.</p>
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AmericanPatriot, that is not my experience, and I sit on the Boards of several non-profits with six-figure budgets. Unfortunately, that means that the Board members contribute, the President is unpaid, the Executive Director is poorly compensated, and we try to keep it in the black. </p>
<p>Perhaps things at the American Cancer Society are different, but I would suggest that the vast majority of non-profits are struggling.</p>
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<p>Which is legal in a paid job, not so much in an unpaid internship.</p>
<p>^^ The precise point is, in fact, that the unpaid internship is NOT a substitute for what would otherwise be paid work.</p>
<p>I would think the more free market people would support this lawsuit, since essentially the employer violated the contract of employment, when they offered internships to these individuals, but did not provide internships and instead, offered only unpaid jobs. It’s a classic bait-and-switch.</p>
<p>I don’t know the details of this case, but the complaints I’ve mostly heard about internships is that the interns did not get the training and exposure that they were promised. They could quit midstream, of course, but at that point it may be too late to get something else (i.e., if it’s a summer internship), and often the promises continue.</p>
<p>Given the incredibly, awful legal job market, I always feel compelled to take on a legal summer associate at my small firm. A sad-eyed student comes begging every year, just looking for some legal experience to put on their resume. I clearly inform them at the beginning of the summer there is no “job” at the firm at the end of the rainbow. Law schools provide law students 0 practical experience about being a lawyer----and it’s difficult to make the experience profitable or even a break even venture for the firm even at relatively low pay/hour. The kids are only around 3 months, and by the time they figure out the most basic office tasks, they have to go back to school. I pay them an hourly rate, but each year I say “never again” because I figure out that it’s just not worth it to have them around. Most of what they do cannot be charged to client and it takes up my time (i.e., less billable hours for me) to supervise them. It’s an altruistic venture by my firm. I had one unpaid intern (before rules were clarified). I routinely brought him to client meetings, client lunches, talked him through documents, etc.—BUT, there is no way I’m paying some kid to sit through those meetings and “educational sessions” when there is absolutely no benefit to the firm. Paid and unpaid internships are structured very differently----and often, what the students want is the experience given by an unpaid internship (exposure to the actual practice of law—as opposed to being paid for things they are actually qualified to do.) I recognize other industries may be different.</p>