We as college students are endlessly told that earning a degree is no longer enough these days. Experience, connections, and a strong resume are all pivotal to success after school, but in the end we need internships.
But what happens when getting an internship begins to feel almost as challenging as getting an actual job?
For many students, internships are believed to be the link between classrooms and the professional world. They present us with an opportunity to take what we learn in class and apply it someplace that may lead to a profession. The difficulty is that internships have become more competitive with what seems like less availability from employers for students looking to gain experience.
Just from personal experience, you spend hours searching through LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, company websites, and other numerous recruiting websites filling out job application after job application. Each one requires a resume, cover letter (that you’ve changed countless times), writing samples, portfolios, references and anything else you have in the hopes that you stick out to hiring managers. And after all of that, you might receive an AI rejection email—or in most cases, never hear back at all.
The level of competition for internships has become extremely tough. There are only a small number of openings that companies are willing to offer, all while thousands of students are searching and applying for those same opportunities you are. We’ve all spent countless hours trying to put together the best application possible with the realization that you are going up against an unknown number of students doing the exact same thing.
At a certain point, applying for internships starts to feel more like playing the lottery than taking the next step toward obtaining a job. You continue to submit applications and hope your name stands out from the rest. For those who are simply trying to get their foot in the door, the process can quickly become discouraging and frustrating.
There is plainly the concern of accessibility. There are only so many valuable positions offered, especially within competitive industries such as journalism, finance, marketing, social media, public relations, and engineering. Many companies will only offer one position for thousands of students looking to apply even though these companies are more than capable of entertaining more positions. When the market is flooded with students looking at a handful of positions, qualified hopefuls are predictably going to be left out.
And then there is perhaps the most maddening part of the internship system: unpaid internships.
In the current economic climate, asking a college student, or even an unemployed worker looking to get into a new field, to work for free is genuinely unacceptable. So many of the companies you find on websites are some of the most profitable and wealthy businesses that can undoubtedly offer paid internships.
Students already have enough expenses. Tuition, transportation, food, rent and daily bills do not simply vanish because an internship offers “valuable experience.” If someone is expected to work between 15 and 30 hours a week without being paid, those are hours they cannot spend working at a paying job.
Experience is valuable, but so is our time.
Students should never have to choose between gaining experience to put on a resume and earning the income they need to live. An unpaid internship could be convenient for someone who has financial support, but not every student has that luxury. Some students work throughout college because they have no other choice. That suggests unpaid internships tend to favor students who can afford to work for free while blocking out those who cannot.
This doesn’t imply internships have no value. Of course they do. But if companies think interns supply enough value to answer phones, create content, manage social media, conduct research, assist with projects, attend meetings and participate in everyday operations, then those students deserve compensation for that work.
The internship structure should and can be presenting a lot more possibilities for students, not generating additional obstacles they have to overcome.
Companies need to expand internship programs, universities should continue building partnerships with employers, and paid positions should become the standard rather than the exception. Students need to be able to achieve professional skills without wondering whether they can afford to take the chance.
We are always told that our college years are the time to get ready for our future endeavors. If internships are going to be such a critical slice of that principle, then students deserve a system that values both our potential and the value of our time.
