Jonathan K. Cardinal has built his résumé on thousand-dollar stipends.
As a government major from a working-class family, he couldn’t have afforded to take the unpaid internships so common in his field. When he got one with the Canadian Parliament, however, St. Lawrence University gave him a grant. He made ends meet by driving 60 miles home from Ottawa each weekend, to Ogdensburg, N.Y., to work for minimum wage at a local radio station, Q Country.
Mr. Cardinal’s first internship led to another — with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during a semester in Washington covered by his financial aid. He graduated from St. Lawrence in May, but not before landing another grant, from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, to intern with the Democratic Leadership Council this summer in Washington.
The financial support has been invaluable, he says: “It has set me up for a career.”
Internships have become a prime form of professional capital, but many remain unpaid, and poorer students suffer. However, colleges — mostly small, private institutions — are coming to their aid, offering modest grants to make the all-important opportunities viable for a more diverse population. The programs reflect not only colleges’ increased attention to career development, but also a broadening definition of educational access. Revamped financial-aid policies may bring lower-income students in the door, but resources like internship grants help them keep up with their more-privileged classmates.
“That’s one of the more important aspects of career assistance that a university can provide a student,” says Mark Oldman, a founder of Vault, a career-information company. Amid so many unpaid and low-paying internships, he says, “the university can come to the rescue financially.”
While colleges seek to level the playing field, other forces exacerbate lower-income students’ disadvantage. Many companies, to shield themselves from labor laws, require that unpaid interns receive academic credit. That often means that students pay tuition, although some colleges draw up vague letters to recognize internships, satisfying employers without conferring — or charging for — credit. But some students shell out big bucks to work for no pay. Companies like University of Dreams charge up to $9,500 to find students the perfect internship, house and entertain them, and award them academic credit.
In such a competitive market, are colleges’ modest grants an adequate solution? Some administrators see them as a necessary stopgap measure. They point to students whose subsidized internships have jump-started bright careers. Others argue that the grants allow employers to keep internships unpaid — and encourage students to line up willingly for wageless work.
Students are just glad that if one hand doesn’t feed them, another will.
Internship or Bust
An internship used to be optional, an added bonus. But for many of today’s overprogrammed college students, it has become a critical career move — and a rite of passage. In the decade since a notorious intern, Monica Lewinsky, familiarized the world with the role, internships have become a craze, even spawning reality TV shows like Donald Trump’s The Apprentice.
Large companies in certain sectors, like finance and consulting, have turned internship programs into recruiting pipelines, complete with generous compensation to woo students. As a result of that practice — and an economic downturn — anyone without an in worries about being left out.
There is no consensus, and no national data, on whether the majority of internships are paid or unpaid. But in glamorized industries like entertainment, politics, and the news media, interns earn little more than a subway pass, if that. “It’s certainly not fair,” says Mr. Oldman, of Vault, “but it’s just something that’s accepted.”
Niraj Shah, who supervises students at the University of California’s Washington Center, says that few of the wonkish internships in town are paid. “In D.C., people are willing to work for free just for the experience,” he says. “They know it’s going to come back and pay them dividends.”
A prestigious internship has such cachet that 800 students applied for 40 unpaid positions this summer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a liberal organization, picked 10 interns this summer from about 90 applicants. Those positions also do not pay. “We actually don’t find it that much of a handicap,” says Richard Trilsch, administrative director there.
Many colleges, however, worry that it is. Institutions from Connecticut College, in New London; to Austin College, in Sherman, Tex.; to Whitman College, in Walla Walla, Wash., are offering grants so students can pursue unpaid internships. Connecticut awarded 285 students — almost two-thirds of its rising seniors — up to $3,000 this summer. Austin paid 54 students $2,300, and Whitman gave 26 students $2,100 each. A program at Smith College promises support for all students, regardless of financial need.
Other programs have specific qualifications or goals. American University houses and feeds American Indian students while they serve as interns at federal agencies or private firms. Butler University, in Indianapolis, offers students subsidized on-campus housing, activities, and career counseling if they take summer internships at local organizations through its Brain Gain program. Some large, public institutions — like the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Virginia — give grants for unpaid internships, often within particular academic departments, but most programs are at small, private colleges. They are usually financed by outside donors and foundations.
At Sewanee: the University of the South, the number of stipends for interns has grown significantly in recent years. This summer 126 students — almost 10 percent of the undergraduate population — are living on its grants. The money comes from 21 endowed funds, broken down by major or career field. Five additional funds have almost matured, says Kim Heitzenrater, director of career services, and in its $180-million capital campaign, Sewanee has already surpassed its goal of $5-million for the internship program.
“Hearing about the need and wanting to let more and more students take part has created the interest in funding here,” Ms. Heitzenrater says.
Sewanee students must secure internships before they apply for the grants. They submit budgets, indicating, for example, whether they will have to pay for housing. But Sewanee, like many colleges, does not officially consider need in awarding its stipends.
This summer Claire E. Crapo, a history major from Martin, Tenn., has an unpaid internship at the Center for the Study of the Presidency, in Washington. Sewanee’s Tonya Public Affairs Internship Fund, named after a foundation in Chattanooga, pays her $350 a week.
“I feel so lucky,” she says. “There’s no way I ever could have afforded to live in D.C. and do this internship without the Tonya funding.” Instead Ms. Crapo would be at home in Martin, she says, baby-sitting and waiting tables. The most desirable internships tend to be in major cities, not most students’ hometowns, she says.
Jessica Hood graduated from Sewanee this past spring with a degree in political science but no internship to her name. Each summer she had lived at home, in Alpharetta, Ga., working for a YMCA camp or a catering company. But now, with a Tonya grant, she is an intern at the National Women’s Business Council, a bipartisan advisory group in Washington.
Looking for a full-time job with that on her résumé gives her an edge, Ms. Hood says: “It makes me a better candidate for so many different things.”
Status Quo
Grant recipients tell good stories. And career advisers are quick to applaud colleges for improving access to internships that remain unpaid.
“The smartest short-term solution … is we’ve got to come up with the funding,” says Peter Vogt, publisher of the national newsletter Campus Career Counselor. But that approach may have unfortunate consequences.
“It makes me wonder if it sort of enables the employers,” Mr. Vogt says. “In a way you set up the whole situation to continue status quo.”
And that situation is arguably legal. Federal labor law sets certain standards for unpaid internships. They must offer training “similar to that which would be given in a vocational school” — the reason some companies insist on academic credit — and they must benefit the intern, giving no “immediate advantage” to the employer.
Some online descriptions of internships characterize them as elective training. Words like “voluntary” and references to what interns will learn attempt to distinguish interns from employees, who would be entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay.
Labor lawyers are not convinced. Some internships may be voluntary apprenticeships, they say, within the law. But they see widespread violations among employers — particularly for-profit corporations — that benefit from free labor. Yet the hordes of eager interns do not protest.
“They collaborate in their own victimization,” says David L. Gregory, a professor of law at St. John’s University, in New York, who has studied the legal rights of interns. By some accounts, colleges and their grant programs are accomplices.
Interns may get checks, but not from the companies and organizations they serve. “People get lulled into the idea that it’s OK to work without getting paid,” says Catherine K. Ruckelshaus, legal co-director at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for lower-wage workers. “Employers can take advantage of it.”
Tuition hikes, textbook costs, student-loan rates, and credit-card marketing generate considerable public outrage, but graduates saddled with debt may also have unpaid or low-paying internships to blame. “That really makes it difficult for our young workers to start becoming economically self-sufficient,” Ms. Ruckelshaus says.
In Germany, students have mobilized against unpaid internships. But no such movement has begun here, and no state attorney general has made the issue a cause.
Kathy Sims, director of career services at the University of California at Los Angeles, thinks colleges should be stronger advocates for their students. And stipends, she says, are the wrong approach.
“You make two students happy,” she says, “and maybe two employers, but even at a small campus, it’s at the expense of many others.” UCLA does not have a universitywide grant program.
What colleges should do, says Ms. Sims, is try to persuade employers to pay interns fair wages. Employers call her office daily, she says, to ask for help designing internships. She argues for decent salaries. She tells employers that, among other benefits, they will attract a more diverse pool of candidates.
At the same time, the university is not contacting employers out of the blue to persuade them to pay interns, says Ms. Sims. “There are some industries,” she says, “where that’s not really going to happen.”
Next Best Thing
With unpaid internships still so common, colleges’ subsidies are helping more — if not all — students compete. And development officers are seeking new donations to expand their institutions’ grant programs.
Susquehanna University, in Selinsgrove, Pa., is providing 22 students with average grants of $2,000 to take internships this summer. One of them is James N. Hendershot.
Before hearing about the program, Mr. Hendershot, a junior history major, planned to live at home this summer, in Harrisburg, Pa., and work as a cashier at Costco. Now he has an internship researching business history at Legg Mason, a financial-services company, in Baltimore.
The position pays, but Mr. Hendershot needed to do more than break even. With the grant, he can save money to help cover his tuition and expenses next fall.
Susquehanna promotes stories like his. In the past couple of years, the university has held luncheons on the campus to introduce donors to students who have benefited from the internship grants.
“With many of the folks who are in the position to make gifts, that really resonates,” says Ron Cohen, vice president for university relations. Demand for the grants is greater than Susquehanna can meet, he says, and so it is making a continuing case to donors.
Other institutions are also stepping up their efforts to aid interns. Illinois College, in Jacksonville, secured a state grant to support students in unpaid or low-paying internships.
When Mr. Cardinal was at St. Lawrence, he became an advocate for aspiring interns. As student-body president, he lobbied the Board of Trustees to expand the pool of money for grants. If the university was truly committed to low- and middle-income students, he argued, it needed to help them develop their careers.
Twenty-four students applied for the grants this summer. The university awarded 16. Mr. Cardinal worries about the students who are left out. “When they don’t get the internship funding,” he says, “some people’s opportunities for the summer are kind of dashed.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 54, Issue 45, Page A18
