'Tis the Season to Exploit College Students

In the current recession, everyone -- students, graduates, blue- and white-collar workers alike -- faces an increasingly competitive job market. College students have always turned to internships, paid or unpaid, for not only the skill development and on-the-job training but also, frankly, for the résumé padding.

But a recent article from The New York Times concerning the rise in unpaid internships, and whether such positions are in keeping with state and federal regulatory guidelines, seems to have struck a nerve.

"With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor," reports Steven Greenhouse, who wrote the article. (There is no official record of the number or paid or unpaid internships, though Greenhouse notes that Stanford University's job board recently featured 643 unpaid internships -- more than triple than what was offered two years ago.)

"The number of unpaid internships is mushrooming -- fueled by employers' desire to hold down costs and students' eagerness to gain experience for their résumés," Greenhouse reports.

After the Times article ran, the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board called for the Department of Labor to update the six federal legal criteria for unpaid internships and for Congress to pass legislation protecting unpaid interns against harassment and discrimination -- "workplace protections that regular employees enjoy."

And AOL's DailyFinance reported that upon reading the Times article, Atlantic Media had a change of heart and decided to reverse its policy with regard to its internship program. In a statement to DailyFinance, the company explained its decision: "Thinking about the internship program through the lens of Saturday's New York Times story, we found ourselves revisiting the concept. ... Yesterday, we decided to pay, retroactively, both last year's interns and our current class."

The Economic Policy Institute released a paper on "Reforming the Regulation of Student Internships" right around the time of the Times article. The authors point to the current system of regulations for internships and outline three unfair labor market outcomes the status quo generates: the prevalence of unpaid internships, the replacement of regular workers with interns and a lack of legal protection for young, vulnerable workers.

The same policy paper also made this point:

The prevalence of unpaid internships means the choice to take an internship is not only contingent upon a student's qualifications, but also his or her economic means, thus institutionalizing socioeconomic disparities beyond college. An unpaid internship entails three months of forgone wages and frequently travel, housing, and other living expenses -- often too great a price for students of modest means. . . . Given the critical importance of internships in securing employment after graduation (particularly in fields that require a high degree of training), low-income students find themselves at a particular disadvantage.

Indeed, now more than ever, very few students have the familial support or financial means (often the same thing) that is required in order to work for free. A 2009 report from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators found that 61 percent of colleges who participated in the study reported an increase of 10 percent or more in financial aid applications than the previous year. Even after taking full advantage of financial loans and/or grant programs offered to them, 44 percent of college students "still had some need remaining after receiving financial aid," according to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics.

And how do the majority meet that remaining need? They work part-time or even full-time jobs to make ends meet -- often, ironically, to the detriment of their studies. While researchers confirm that students working more than 20 hours a week are more likely to struggle with maintaining good grades, a report from Demos called "Work Less, Study More, & Succeed" (Ha! If only it were that easy) finds that 45 percent of students at four-year public institutions work more than 20 hours a week. (That number is even higher for community college students: 61 percent work 20 hours a week.)

This scenario becomes particularly troublesome when squared with recent unemployment figures.The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate for workers ages 16 to 29 was 15.2 percent in March -- the highest rate since 1948, according to The Wall Street Journal. So, not only do college students have to work more to get by, but they're also facing scarcer odds of finding that job in the first place.

How does this all shake out? The bottom line is that, by and large, the practice of unpaid internships is inherently discriminatory. It's hard to imagine how lower-income, working-class students struggling to balance a full load of classes and a 20 hour-plus a week job could possibly have the time, let alone afford, to work at an unpaid internship.

As a student in the hunt for a summer internship myself, I can only hope that more for-profit employers take the principled, moral step that companies such as The Atlantic have taken in changing their internship programs to better serve students of all financial backgrounds. Of course, this is mostly wishful thinking on my part; as a journalism major, I'm well aware that most of the internships in my field are unpaid. Even so, any employer who offers unpaid internships would do well to note that the era of loose regulations of such positions will soon be over. The student internship is an important college tradition, one that affords significant opportunities. It can be the determining factor in whether or not that student is hired. There is no better time than now to amend the current system and embrace a more equitable, nondiscriminatory approach.