As a graduating senior, I know all too well that accepting an unpaid internship has become a crucial, yet unfair stepping stone for many college students. While paid internships do exist, employers understandably would rather hire an intern with experience.
In the meantime, students are committing a significant amount of their time to unpaid internships when they could be working part-time jobs to decrease their student debt and improve the current and future economy of this country.
Universities, both private and public, steadily keep increasing tuition costs while ironically also promoting unpaid internships to their students. In the 2012-2013 academic school year, AU’s tuition cost $19,491 per semester for a full-time undergraduate. In 2013-2014 tuition rose to $20,066 per semester.
According to AU’s Career Center, only 40 percent of internships are paid, but students should still seek to find what they refer to as a “high quality internship,” that will give them academic credit and real world experience. This means that unpaid interns who receive college credit rather than a paycheck actually have to pay around $1,180 per credit hour. Some students equate their internship to count for three credit hours, costing them over $3,000 for an internship that does not pay them in the first place.
According to CNN, the average student who graduates in 2013 will be $35,200 in debt.
Students need guaranteed jobs when they graduate so that they can pay off our debt. Many students believe that a resume full of internship experience will make them a prime candidates in the job market, which is why many students accept at least one unpaid internship.
I am no different. In lieu of enhancing my own resume, I accepted my dream internship last spring, even though it was unpaid. I had applied to several paid internships, all of which required previous internship experience, so I knew that I needed to sacrifice a paycheck for experience. As a student putting myself through college, I knew that interning without pay would negatively affect me financially, but I had enough saved to pay for that semester and figured that I would work a lot over the summer to pay for my undergraduate semester that upcoming fall.
Trouble arose this past summer when I was awarded my financial aid package and was shocked to see that my grants had been decreased by about $7,000. Had I worked two part time jobs in the spring, like I had done every other semester, I would have been able to afford the difference in my unexpected tuition payment alteration.
At this point, I had to do what any other student in my position would: I applied for a loan. Because of my debt from school and my single mother’s lack of credit as a waitress, Sallie Mae denied me a Parent-Plus loan. With just 14 credits needed to earn my degree, I felt completely stranded. I had no way of paying for my last semester of college because I had spent the previous semester interning 18 hours a week, unpaid.
AU’s financial aid office would not adjust my grants, despite having maintained the same GPA as in previous years. I had come too far to not graduate, which is why I resorted to creating an online fundraiser as a very last option.
After reaching half of my monetary goal, I received a phone call from the Director of Financial Aid. He explained that an anonymous alum had seen the link to my fundraiser on LinkedIn (since I belong to an AU Alum group on the site), and was quite distraught that his/her former school would do this to a graduating senior. It was only then that I was awarded a scholarship to cover the rest of my tuition costs that I could not fundraise myself. I am now set to graduate from AU this December, as planned.
I am not sharing this very personal story to gain pity, but to rather draw attention to the hypocrisy of the actions made by institutions promoting unpaid internships. Universities are raising the cost of tuition and cutting students’ financial aid, while promoting free labor, which will directly hurt middle and low-income students. It is time that we end this class discrimination and a great way to start by encouraging our universities to only post applications for paid internships.
Danielle Ortiz-Geis is a senior in the School of Communication.
