Summer internships can carry a price

There's an article in today's Wall Street Journal aptly titled Summer Internships Can Carry a Price.

For college students strapped for cash, what could be worse than an unpaid summer internship? Maybe having to pay to get one.

Driven in part by labor-law concerns about uncompensated work, companies are increasingly requiring that students receive college credit for their internships -- or lose their slot. While many colleges are finding creative ways to satisfy employers without actually granting credit for nonacademic work, others are offering some form of credit, and demanding that students pay the related tuition.

Businesses are correct that having someone do work for free violates the labor laws. But making people pay money in order to do work is an ironic way around a law that was designed to ensure that workers are paid a fair wage.

Here's an idea: companies can be really safe and actually pay the interns $5.15/hour.

Comments

[superdestroyer]

HS,

I am sure that it is more than the wage that puts businesses off of actually hiring a students. It could be legal liability, workmens comp, other fair labor practices act, work hour limitations, eeoc, etc.

To combine with a prevous post, maybe the businesses/organizations should set up a non-profit foundation and have the students volunteer for the foundation and then have the foundation assign the students to work. It is the way that hospitals get around the rules (have the students volunteer for the Red Cross and then have the student work at a hospital).

[christy]

I noticed many of my fellow law students who couldn't get paying jobs after 1L had to take non-paying internships, and then sign up to get school credit for them, paying tuition, so that they could qualify for loans to cover living expenses.

Also, schools are pushing kids into these internships where they pay tuition to get credit... how nice the school doesn't have to do shit besides sign a form and they get tuition dollars.

[Nancy Spungen, Esq.]

Interesting the article says a fund manager, Legg Mason, Inc., has unpaid internships that require class credit. I would expect this from FOX, but how does the financial world get away with this?

Several years ago, in J-school, I encountered the opposite from several non-large papers in the L.A. area. They offered to let students write for free, but *refused* to give college credit -- something about potential liability. So, I had to work the unpaid time in with my paid job, plus a full courseload to be considered full-time for loans.