Students paying to get internships?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03perlin.html?src=tptw

by kunle • 15 years ago

62 72 15 years ago

Takes a lot of guts for a company to say "Pay us so that you can eventually work here." And it's such a tough time for young folks these days that they essentially need to take the deal or run the risk of not finding employment after college.

patio11• 15 years ago

If you read carefully, the scenario appears to be "Pay university based on number of credit hours applied to degree" + "Get credit hours for internship". The student is not paying the company.

My alma mater put a similar rule in place regarding study abroad: credits transferring from study abroad programs would be charged at the university's standard rates regardless of the cost of the underlying program. (This was effectively a wash for me, since Japan was a high-cost option, but it was highly detrimental to folks who would e.g. use a year in Israel or any of a few African destinations at $5k to get a year of credit which normally cost about $40k.)

(There is another scenario, in which students -- well, rich parents -- pay brokers to arrange internships for e.g. DC governmental institutions. Someone I know works at one such broker, where commercially reasonable best efforts to find a placement cost about $10k. She's deeply conflicted about their business model and is quitting soon largely because of it.)

kd0amg2• 15 years ago

The article definitely said Dream Careers was selling internships to students.

Alex3917• 15 years ago

"Menlo College, a business-focused college in northern California, [...] sold credits to a business called Dream Careers. Menlo grossed $50,000 from the arrangement in 2008, while Dream Careers sold Menlo-accredited internships for as much as $9,500."

I hadn't heard about this before, but it's an interesting model. Perhaps some day we'll literally be able to trade academic credits like commodities.

RandallBrown• 15 years ago

makes me glad I'm in the tech field. Most of my non-CS friends were amazed that my summer internships paid as much as they were going to make after they graduated.

jjm• 15 years ago

After you subtract the cost of the credits, how much are you left with? Hourly rate?

kd0amg2• 15 years ago

In my case, $500 went to the university (less than what they'd normally charge for the two credits), which works out to about a 42¢ decrease in my hourly pay.

phamilton8• 15 years ago

Academic credit is not a requirement for me. The 5 offers I got paid between 20 and 28 dollars and hour, all of which included relocation benefits of some sort, some included health insurance, some included a monthly housing stipend. Intel even gives interns a part of the July bonus. After 4 months, I should be able to not work next year (my senior year) and graduate without any student debt. Granted, my tuition is dirt cheap (2200/semester before scholarships), but I will still make a substantial amount this summer.

z2amiller• 15 years ago

This hits close to home for me. My wife is currently going through the process to get a one-year internship to for her psychology doctorate, which is required for graduation. Having to pay for the privilege is an understatement - her university counts this as a 'class' so the tuition cost for her to turn in some paperwork at the end of the year will be about $3000. In addition, with gas at $4/gallon, there'll be about a $200/mo commute cost for the next year. So far the internships she's looked at pay a $5000 stipend for the whole year.

Of course that pales in comparison to the cost for child care for this year; most of the child care we've looked at in the Bay Area is ~$1700/mo, so her internship is going to cost us about $20,000.

I don't see this system changing anytime soon. As it stands, there are fewer internship slots than there are students. Because it is so competitive, my wife has already been declined by two agencies which had openings directly related to her thesis. I already don't understand how more placements aren't willing to get nearly-free labor, so forcing employers to pay some kind of minimum wage for interns will only reduce the number of slots available to students. Indeed, in addition to all of the indirect costs (child care, etc) we would gladly write someone a check for her to have an internship in the area so that she can finish this year. If she is deferred because there are no placements, it is another year before she starts a "real job".

grav1tas2• 15 years ago

While the price tag is pretty bad, at least she'll be ending with an advanced degree. Some of the people in this article had comparable liabilities but were going to wind up with undergraduate degrees. I hope it works out for you all, regardless.

nkassis• 15 years ago

There are other options, in Quebec they have a couple of universities doing co-op programs where students work (paid) half time and go to school the other half, the schools find prospective employers and work out the duties the students need to perform. My cousin did this for his architect internship, this is a required part of his program, he needs two semesters like this to graduate. He had a positive experience and made a decent amount of money at the same time.

I took a different route, while in College (in the Florida) I worked full time for the university as a System Adminstrator/Software Developer. I gain 4 years of experience doing it and only pushed my graduation a year back or so. It was hard, work sometimes clashed with school but right after I graduated I had not trouble finding work (I decided to leave the University to explore new stuff, 4 years in one place can get boring :) ).

I would never take an unpaid internship because it's obvious that A) you don't learn anything filing papers all day B) it's obvious employers use this to get free labor even if they aren't supposed to, of course in the tech world we are lucky enough that self learners can quickly get jobs based on skills only. Not so in the other professions I guess.

AN447• 15 years ago

In the U.K the Conservative Part were auctioning internships in several prestigious organizations. One Crispin 'I make money' Odey offered a week internship at his Hedge Fund for £5,000.

Its quite common. Personally, I have used my own personal contacts to get work experience. But when you involve money into this matter you are just creating more of a gulf between the rich and poor.

It is extremely common across all the industries in London. Very unfair. Media/Journalism is the worst culprits of this.

SandB0x• 15 years ago

This only really applies to humanities students. Take a degree in the natural sciences, engineering, CS or mathematics and you may find that people are much more willing to part with money for your services.

grav1tas2• 15 years ago

Agreed. My second year in college as a CS student I felt like I was rolling in money (relative to working at a grocery store) when I had an internship.

Deutscher2• 15 years ago

I must have done something wrong then. I graduated with a Masters degree in a traditional/hard Engineering discipline (GPA ~3.5) in 2008 and worked as an unpaid CAD monkey for 6 months. I submitted more resumes than I can remember for full-time positions, but didn't even get a single interview call.

I am now gainfully employed, but doing nothing related to my undergraduate/graduate education.

nphrk• 15 years ago

Is this Germany (judging from your username) ?

barik• 15 years ago

Yes, you probably did something wrong. If you want to have a job after graduation, the surest path is to do an internship or coop while you are still in school. Surprisingly, it doesn't have to be much either. One summer is usually sufficient, as companies don't want to roll the dice on full-time hires with no documented work history.

orijing2• 15 years ago

Exactly. I was able to pay for tuition and living expenses without debt and financial aid because software internships were so lucrative (even in the midst of the Great Recession). But then again, I studied at a public university.

I feel for my friends (and others) who had to work all summer, perhaps during the year, without pay in order to pad their resumes.

nroman• 15 years ago

The top tech companies (Google, Facebook, MS, etc.) see internships as the best way to recruit the top talent as they graduate from college. For this reason they will often pay engineering interns anywhere from $5000-$7000 a month.

Internships are also a much better way to screen a potential full-time employee. The company gets 3 months to interview the candidate in a real work environment, instead of a few hours in front of a white board.

gbrindisi3• 15 years ago

It depends a lot on the politics of the country you live.

In my case (italy) hardly anyone will pay you a cent for your interniship even if you are an engineering, CS or math student.

Often companies (expecially if they are little) here see internship like a way to have free manpower.

eru2• 15 years ago

Just apply for an internship in a different European country. That kind of arbitrage is what the EU is for.

DarkShikari• 15 years ago

Agreed -- since entering college, I have yet to be paid less than $6000/month for a software-related internship (counting benefits such as free housing, etc).

I have typically been treated as a starting employee who's simply only going to be around for 3 months, not an "intern". Maybe this is just West Coast tech companies, I don't know.

alnayyir• 15 years ago

> Maybe this is just West Coast tech companies, I don't know. reply

Yep. I know some pretty poorly paid programmers.

alexsb923• 15 years ago

Waterloo University has the biggest coop(internship) program in the world, and it has had the program since the university's inception in 1957, and the program is required for all their Engineering students and optional for the other faculties. In Engineering, all students alternate between school and co-op usually every semester, so the length of the whole degree gets extended to 5 years, with 3 full years worth of studies, and 2 full years worth of experience.

The way it works is that the co-op department, CECS, has an internal job posting website, where students view jobs, and submit their resumes and maybe cover letters. The employers will then look at the resumes and decide on the students they want to interview. Most interviews happen in interview rooms in the CECS building. If the employer cannot attend, then Skype or phone interviews are arranged instead. After the interviews, both the students and the employers rate each other 1 through 9, and the students get automatically paired with the job where the sum of the ratings is the lowest. CECS constantly contacts companies to get them interested in hiring uWaterloo students. Companies that currently hire uWaterloo students include FB, Google, MSFT, Apple, all the big banks in US and Canada, Qualcomm, RIM, and tons of other medium and small companies including Allerta, which HN has been hearing about quite a bit, and which is currently employing me. In terms of job locations most jobs are in North America, however there are quite a few in Japan, Germany, NZ, Australia, UK, and students can set up their own jobs if they don't like what's offered through CECS.

Now about salaries, even for a first work term engineering student the range is $12-$22.50 with an average of $15.94. CECS requires that employers pay the students. Until now however there were few exceptions: start-ups were able to discuss with CECS to see if they could offer unpaid internships, however that's now being phased out. If the company can't pay the students with money, it is now required to pay them through other means such as equity.

The latest Earnings Information for uWaterloo can be found here: http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/pdfs/Hourly_Salary_Information_...

On another note, I think having all these internships spread out, is better for us, students, since it allows us to try out different type of jobs. Once semester you can work for a start-up, while the next one you can work for a big corporate.

EDIT: Even humanities students get paid however relatively less than say, Engineering.

yummyfajitas2• 15 years ago

In Engineering, all students alternate between school and co-op usually every semester, so the length of the whole degree gets extended to 5 years, with 3 full years worth of studies, and 2 full years worth of experience.

From what I've seen(my undergrad had a similar program), this is actually a very bad deal for many students.

If you do coop, you pay roughly the same price as a 4 year student. (Typically you pay fees in the semesters you are working.) Your financial aid is significantly reduced, since you now have income, so you might even pay the college more money. 5 years after starting college, employers will consider you a better than average fresh grad. (I.e., your salary on graduation won't be ordinary graduate + 2 years worth of pay raises.)

In contrast, if you graduate in 4 years, maybe doing (usually paid, but even unpaid) summer internships, you get more financial aid. 5 years after starting college, you are an engineer with 1 year of experience, and with a commensurate pay raise.

If you work as hard as coop students, you can even graduate in 3 years. This considerably reduces your costs, and at the end of 5 years, you have 2 years worth of pay raises under your belt.

orijing2• 15 years ago

Yeah, I have friends at Waterloo who are on that system. The benefit is that they have a lot of experience under their belt, and perhaps the assumption is that companies (for FT positions) will reward them for that?

chrisbennet• 15 years ago

In this economy, it's not usual to graduate in 4 yrs and not be able to find work in your field - even with an engineering degree. The guy with the internship experience under his belt is going to have an advantage in this situation.

Employers these days don't want to invest in training "entry level" employees so getting experience (even if you have to pay for it) is sometimes the only way to get your foot in the door.

reso• 15 years ago

The benefit of co-op is not just the money, it is the variety of experience. You can graduate having worked six different jobs at six different companies. Seeing such a huge variety of work environments, cultures, practices, even cities or different countries, is hugely valuable.

In my co-op terms, I've worked in enterprise software, gaming hardware, two start-ups and one very hot valley company. Each one has taught me different things, even if it was "I never want to work in enterprise software".

alexsb923• 15 years ago

The thing with Canadian universities is that the financial aid isn't that great to begin with. Most of the aid comes from the gov't (at least in Ontario through OSAP). Most students do not qualify for it since their parents' income is too high. Unless you get one of the big 50k to 70k scholarships in grade 12, chances are you'll have to pay for uni quite a bit. The advantage is that it is cheaper than the top universities in the states, so your student debt isn't as large. From what i gathered from uWaterloo grads, you usually end up with student debt worth half of the whole tuition costs, so it's not too bad.

jarek• 15 years ago

> Waterloo University

University of Waterloo.

venturebros3• 15 years ago

I opted out of the internship during school for various reasons. I graduated about two weeks ago and landed an unpaid internship.

I know there are plenty of paid internships out there but companies that offer those do not understand what an internship is or are looking to take advantage. All the paid ones I have seen want you to have either advance knowledge in the subject, x years of experience, and/or previous work history.

burgerbrain3• 15 years ago

What field are you in may I ask? Because it sounds like the exact opposite of what I've seen for CS; extremely well paid, and very understanding about expected skill levels (as in, I was easily able to land a very good, and wellish paid position after merely my freshman year)

venturebros3• 15 years ago

web development

TheBoff• 15 years ago

As a first years CompSci undergraduate at Cambridge, I've found more or less the opposite of this: it seems like I've suddenly become really recruitable. Despite the fact that I'll have only had a years CS tuition, and no industry experience, I've managed to get a well paying internship for the summer.

kongqiu• 15 years ago

Particularly in the humanities, journalism, and social science fields, where most internships are poorly paid (if paid at all), a prospective intern needs to have enough of a financial cushion to both pay their expenses while not earning money at a paying job. This selects for students from higher-income families. Paying for an internship spot sounds like the next logical step under the current system. The question is, how can we level the playing field?

phamilton8• 15 years ago

Mark Cuban has a lot to say from the other side of the coin. He tried to set up an unpaid internship program and was denied by their legal department.

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/05/want-an-unpaid-internship...

earl• 15 years ago

Yeah. Having to pay people when they work for you. What sort of crazy shit will people dream up next?

Empact• 15 years ago

Barring mutually consensual exchanges?

phamilton8• 15 years ago

I think you missed his argument. He isn't saying "We want to take advantage of interns." He's saying that there are a lot of interesting positions and projects which frequently are scrapped because they are not financially viable. He wanted to offer these positions to unpaid interns, giving them press passes and full access to the resources they need. Either they turn into financially viable projects, in which these interns have a job prospect, or they become a valuable bit of hands on experience for a resume.

uscfan1781• 15 years ago

It's also important to understand how the internship dynamics change as you progress through the four years of college. Getting a paid internship after your freshmen or sophomore year is extremely difficult. Very few large, "name brand" companies include freshman and sophomores in their internship programs. Those that do typically have ratios along the lines of 90% juniors, 10% freshman and sophomores.

The catch is that landing the junior year internship in large part depends on having at least one previous relevant internship. That leaves most freshman and sophomores struggling to find internships at local businesses in their field of interest. Most of the businesses don't have an actual internship program, have no idea what to do with an intern, and don't have the money to pay one even if they wanted to.

This describes the experience of me and 95% of my friends at Duke over the last 4 years. Many of us have awesome, extremely high paying jobs lined up after graduation, but we got those jobs as a more or less direct result of working for free after freshman or sophomore year.

My personal experience: Freshman summer: part-time job to support myself, took a summer class, did a lot of (free) work for Duke Student Government Sophomore summer: 3/4 time job as a waiter in a restaurant to support myself. Spent all my free time programming. Junior summer: awesome internship at Microsoft. Post-grad: offers from Google and Microsoft, trying to start my own company.

Basically over the past 20 months or so my pay has gone from ~$6/hr part-time, to ~$75 full time. Trust me, I am not 12-13x smarter, more valuable, or more skilled now than 2 years ago. The system is broken.

Although I never had an unpaid internship my ability to land a paying one after junior year was dependent on the projects I worked on in my free time the previous summer. And that is in the tech industry, which is in by far the best shape. The internship situation in other field (as SandBOx mentioned) is much, much worse.

mdwrigh2• 15 years ago

I'm an NCSU student, so I'm in the same area, looking at mostly the same jobs. What I found is that most students just aren't willing to go through the work to find a job. They want the jobs to be posted somewhere online, so they can fire off a resume they spent a couple hours making (if that). I actually managed to nab a development / systems administration internship straight out of high school for a company out of Durham, mainly because I met one of the management at the company and just asked about a position. I spent two years working for that company (paid, part-time during the year, full-time over the summer) and then a summer and a semester doing [paid] research at NCSU. This summer I've got an internship lined up with Google.

You're absolutely right that a lot of it is dependent on finding internships early on, but I don't think its necessarily that companies aren't hiring underclassmen (though MS, Google, etc. likely aren't), but rather that a lot of students aren't willing to go the lengths to _find_ the job. Not all of them are posted online. Go to your local PUG/LUG/*UG/2600 meeting, and ask around. Most people there will be willing to talk about one with you if you seem relatively competent and willing to learn what you don't know. Plus, as you said, doing projects in your spare time is a HUGE plus. A lot of the things I end up talking about in interviews are side projects that I've done.

Though I'll put the disclaimer that this is all only applicable to the tech field. Unfortunately, other fields don't have it as nicely as we do.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

Imagine that you have an opportunity to "bid" on the right to be a waiter this evening at Masa, the NYC $400/plate (not including alcohol) sushi restaurant. You are an experienced waiter and expect to average 18% in tips on 20 plates served over the course of four hours. Presuming that no one orders alcohol, that's $1440 or $360/hour. If there were no labor laws and Masa really had a free market system such as this in place, it would be rational for a waiter to pay a great deal for the right to collect these tips given that there are few opportunities available to make this much money relative to the supply of capable servers.

I see the internship market as similar. How much is it worth in future earnings to directly observe "how the sausage is made" in a Senator's office? To watch a PR mogul operate after Client X is caught on video grinding up cute puppies in a blender? There are many more people who could profit later from these experiences than there are internships to dole out. It is only the relatively constrained supply of good software engineers which prevents Google from charging for the right to spend a Summer there (not that I think it would even if it could).

antiterra3• 15 years ago

I think you're missing what's actually happening here. In these cases, the students are paying the university for a "registration credit," in order to legalize work without pay. The provider of the internship does not receive this money, and the amount is, more or less, arbitrarily decided by the academic institution. The amount the student pays is therefore cushioned and abstracted from the sort of market forces you describe.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

I agree with you, but my point was only that paying (or simply taking a loss by paying rent in NYC for the Summer) might actually be rational on the student's part. Whether or not the firm receives the payment makes little difference to me in this case although I do appreciate the distinction. My comment about Google charging certainly could have led one astray.

bugsy5• 15 years ago

The waiter situation is not very comparable because the payoff is instant. You collect enough each night to pay the fees. Thus the situation is more akin to renting a booth to sell your wares. You pay rental for access to a crowd that is buying things (food and wait services). Furthermore, the risk is low. If payback is not as much as you expected after the first night, you can move on with only one nights rent lost.

With the internships, there is certainly not an instant pay off. You pay and receive nothing during which you work to benefit the first. No one is paying you for months on end. There are no nightly tips.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

I agree that the waiter's risk is much lower. It was only the evidence that it is sometimes rational to pay for the right to work which I sought from the example.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

These $ <= 0 sorts of internships seem concentrated in fields where social capital is highly valued -- politics, PR, talent management, etc. Could it be that young people from upper class backgrounds are the most likely to possess the social skills and pre-filled Rolodexes required to be successful in these industries? Even if this is not true, it is certainly possible that the head of a PR firm from a wealthy family could not imagine it otherwise. I also wonder if, in addition to no pay, the price of the internship is actually negative because of the reciprocity expected from the social connections used to secure the internship for the recent college graduate.

I am imagining a voice mail like this:

"Hey, Joe [the VP at the PR firm which represents Large Company X], this is Bob, [the internal head of PR from Company X] calling. Would you mind doing me a favor and taking a pass at my niece's resume? She's interested in PR and would love the opportunity to do an internship with you guys this Summer. The pay isn't as important as the experience, and she can stay in her aunt's apartment on the Upper East Side. It's great that we do business together. Talk to you later."

How much has Joe "paid" for his niece's internship?

gallerytungsten• 15 years ago

You're on the right track. Rich kids can afford to work for free.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

More than that, it may be that the families of the affluent implicitly pay for their kids' internships.

antiterra3• 15 years ago

In cases where a student can earn academic credit and not just a certificate for the internship, it could be a worthwhile investment. The student has to pay for those credits anyway to graduate, and real-world experience can provide educational benefits unlikely to be gained in a classroom.

If, on the other hand, the university or college does not give genuine academic credit but simply notes it on the transcript AND they charge for that notation, it's likely a bum deal.

ShabbyDoo6• 15 years ago

Imagine that a group of good software developers were assigned to pick 10 interns out of a pool of 100 applicants for a role at a Facebook, Google, etc. (substitute any software organization which attracts a great applicant pool). What's the probability that most of the ten chosen will be regarded as top engineers ten years from now? I argue that it's pretty high because raw talent is easily measured by skilled practitioners. One or two might have marginal careers because they're flaky or have other, non-technical issues, but the odds of securing a good intern pool from which to hire are quite high.

Are the skills required to be a good lobbyist, talent manager, etc. so easily measured in young people? An internship program wouldn't be terribly valuable for Google if only 1/10 interns were regarded as potential hires after a Summer of observation. What are the implications of such relative randomness on rational behavior on a firm's part w.r.t. internship programs?

jharjono• 15 years ago

in Canada, a CS undergrad can expect to get a paid internship with about CAD $40,000 annual salary (thought that may varies on where you do your internship, which year you're in, where in Canada, etc).

CS undergrads here know that and hardly any of them would go for any unpaid internships.

tsuyoshi• 15 years ago

In third world countries a similar dynamic is common for government jobs. For a job where you can collect a lot of bribes, you will usually have to pay to get the job in the first place, and also kick back a certain portion of your income to whoever you got the job from. In this case you are paying to merely add to your resume, which in a sense is even worse than being an underpaid third world government employee.

This is really a consequence of the very weak job market we have now. You can see some people here commenting that they have no problem getting well-paid internships, but this is only true for people who are at the top of the heap, in terms of attractiveness to employers - there are a lot of such people who read Hacker News. Relative to the population at large though, it's a small percentage of the population.

Students paying to get internships?

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