When I became an undergraduate eleven years ago, I was married, had two kids, and piles of bills to pay. By the time I was far enough along to think about internships, I was divorced, but that was about the only thing that had changed. I made ends meet by waiting tables in a local Mexican food chain and by picking up bartending gigs wherever I could. The notion that I could take a summer off and work for nothing to gain experience in my future field was beyond foreign.
And for a lot of people in school today, it still is, which is crap for a number of reasons, all mentioned in today’s New York Times. Put simply, unpaid internships privilege existing wealth, and in many cases give companies a way to get free labor while providing no real work or educational benefit in return.
