As students, we all value the summer.

In elementary and middle school, it was a time of free living and fun. In high school, it was sports and fun, but for many kids, it’s a lot of work.

In college, it is all work and no play. (OK, maybe a little play.)

But for college students, with every summer that passes, we get a year closer to graduating, and we will all need valuable work experience. The best way to get this experience is to actually work, but of course, we usually cannot simply go into the field we want to right away.

We have to be interns first.

Internships offer students an opportunity to get hands-on experience in their desired field, or in a position similar to their desired role. But again, for many students, summer is a time to make money, not just to get work experience, and many people have to work multiple summer jobs.

Summer jobs and paid internships help students buy their textbooks and pay tuition. Without them, it can add financial stress to their lives.

While there are many internships offered every spring and summer, there are many that are unpaid. In 2019, just under 40% of internships were unpaid. Too many places of work are asking for students to give time and labor for free.

Another injustice within internship opportunities is the issue of who gets what internships. According to a press release from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, it was found that, “White students are overrepresented in paid internships and underrepresented as unpaid interns; Hispanic-American students are overrepresented in the group of students who never have an internship,” and that, “Multi-racial Americans are overrepresented as unpaid interns and among the group that has never had an internship.”

This information shows us that this is not just an economic issue, but a continual systemic issue.

In an article for Psychology Today, Dr. Utpal Dholakia said, “Imagine if your employer told you, ‘We are going to skip this week’s paycheck because you learned new skills at work this week. We feel certain this will help your career tremendously in a few years.’ Would you find this acceptable? Would this help you put food on your table? If it’s not acceptable to behave this way with a full-time employee or a gig worker, why is it fair to treat an intern this way?”

Dholakia’s point that these unpaid internships are unethical is correct. Asking students who are willing and wanting to work to participate in unpaid internships is conflicting. Companies that ask for skilled workers but are unwilling to pay for said skilled labor do not promote a positive attitude to work for that company in the future.

How are students supposed to pay rent? Pay for food? Pay for little luxuries such as a coffee or a drink with friends? All of these questions are things that many people, in and out of college, think about constantly. Living a life should not be controlled by a paycheck, but in a capitalist society, we are painfully dependent.

Capitalism is a whole other beast that I don’t have time to tackle, and could be its own opinion piece, but it still contributes to internship problems.

From a purely economical viewpoint, it may make sense that internship workers not be paid because they may not be a long-term investment in the company or community. It could also be seen as an economic loss if the internship needs to end early or does not end in a hire.

I’d counter this. Why are companies hiring interns to not hire them in the long run? If companies want skilled workers to be on their teams, why not encourage and build a healthy relationship from the start and take a risk on young people who are willing and eager to learn? Why not make use of them?

There may be some economic positives to having unpaid internships, but I (and many others) do not feel that they outweigh the negatives. Unpaid internships are a detrimental and dangerous aspect of a young person’s job market and should not be a regularly used form of “education.” If an employer is unwilling to pay for skilled labor, then they need to re-evaluate their needs and plan to financially accommodate their workers. They may even see better results.

As a college student myself, I am currently looking for a paid summer internship that is in my field. Journalism is a small business when you get into it, and internships are few and far between. And while, yes, experience is valuable, getting treated like an actual employee would be a better learning experience all around. Being treated like a valuable member of the team is something that can inspire people to be productive and creative, thus creating a more valuable worker.

Mae Macfarlane can be reached at Macf7507@stthomas.edu.