Unpaid Internships Lead To Lower-Paying Jobs, Study Finds (theguardian.com)

The Guardian reports: Almost every graduate taking an unpaid internship can expect to be worse off three years later than if they had gone straight into work. That is the shock finding of the first survey of its kind of the career trajectories of tens of thousands of students over a six-year period. The study, conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex, reveals that, three-and-a-half years after graduating, former interns face a salary penalty of approximately £3,500, compared with those who went straight into paid work, and £1,500 compared with those who went into further study... The study also found that those who took internships were less likely to go on to professional or managerial roles or be satisfied with their career compared with those who had gone straight into work.
Slashdot reader BarbaraHudson warns unpaid internships are also "a possible indicator of a large oversupply of workers to jobs available and downward pressure on pay." Anyone else want to share thoughts about the current job market for professionals -- or your own horror stories about your first job after college?

Comments

It's almost as if labor has value

[FunkSoulBrother]

..and you shouldn't squander it away by demonstrating that you're willing to provide it for free.

See also:

-Programming contests where the hosting corp gives $100K as a Grand Prize but retains rights to all of the contestants code (and doesn't even pay any FICA tax)

-The NCAA making billions off of 'student-athletes' with lucrative television contracts

Re:Invisible Hand.

[TheRaven64]

Exactly. In a high-demand field, a paid internship is a cheap way of hiring: you get to spend three months finding out if your prospective employee is competent and they get to spend three months deciding if they want to work for you (and, if they are competent, you get to spend three months persuading them that they do). In comparison with pretty much any other hiring mechanism, a paid internship is very cheap, in a field where there's a skills shortage. If companies in a field can easily hire competent people without this, then that's a good indication that there's a glut of talent.

Colleges don't rake it in

[rsilvergun]

unless their for profit. My kid's going to a public university. The only admin folks making good money are the dean the football coach and the basketball coach. Everybody else makes jack. The professors make low six figures, but they're also tops in their fields. Most are there so they can get money to do the kinds of basic research that corporations won't fund because while both interesting & beneficial it doesn't pay off for decades.

College is just really, really expensive. It always has been, but we funded it with tax dollars taken mostly from the upper class. We did that because post WWII folks felt they were owed a good life with an education. People seem to have lost sight of that. Or if they think they're owed something they think it's just them that's owed it and that everybody else should just pay for it themselves.

Re:"shock finding"?

[GuB-42]

An unpaid internship is not necessarily exploitation.
If the company actually takes time teaching you how to work, it can cost them more than any output you produce. And as an intern, you are not expected to be as productive as an experienced worker, and someone is likely to come after you, fixing your mistakes. It results in you taking valuable time from full-payed employees while not offering much in return. The reason these company take interns at all is that by the end of the internship, you may turn out to be a great potential hire.
At least it is the idea behind internships. However some companies abuse the system to get slave labor. And honest companies are more likely to pay interns anyways.

You're revenue figures are false

[rsilvergun]

they come from private for profit schools that rose up as blue collar work disappeared due to outsourcing and people who couldn't hack college found themselves without opportunities and desperately trying to get ahead. They did indeed take advantage of cheap, guaranteed government loans. The public universities are non-profit. They have no revenues per se.

You know all this. You know exactly what the problem is, which is that we abandoned the working class so the rich could have tax cuts. Are you one of their lackeys or do you just enjoy trolling? You've got the talking points down too well to just be some random yahoo. Either way you should be ashamed of yourself. You and your ilk bring down all of civilization out of fear, anger and hatred. Does it feel good? Is it worth it?