Schools assume a proverbial middle-class or upper-class support system for kids and they have grown economically dependent on this assumption as the past 30-40 years of wealth transfer have made those at the top comfortably uninformed about the crisis below.
Far from resisting the exploitation of their students, colleges have made academic credit a commodity. Just look at Menlo College, a business-focused college in northern California, which sold credits to a business called Dream Careers. Menlo grossed $50,000 from the arrangement in 2008, while Dream Careers sold Menlo-accredited internships for as much as $9,500.
To meet the credit requirement of their employers, some interns have essentially had to pay to work for free: shelling out $2,700 to the University of Pennsylvania in the case of an intern at NBC Universal and $1,600 to New York University by an intern at “The Daily Show,” to cite two examples from news reports.
Charging students tuition to work in unpaid positions might be justifiable in some cases — if the college plays a central role in securing the internship and making it a substantive academic experience. But more often, internships are a cheap way for universities to provide credit — cheaper than paying for faculty members, classrooms and equipment.
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They [13 university presidents] described feeling caught between the demands of employers and interns, and scrambling to make accommodations: issuing vague letters of support for interns to show employers; offering sketchy “internship transcript notations” or “internship certificates”; and even handing out “0.0 credit” — a mysterious work-around by which credit both is and isn’t issued.There are a lot of these work-arounds going around these days. And I feel for these beleaguered college presidents: maybe they can chip in for interns from their escalating pay. It is happening in Canada, too. The backlash against unpaid internships (macleans.ca)
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