Three Ways Colleges and Universities Can Help Address Unpaid Internships

This summer, the White House announced that it would pay its new class of interns for the first time in history. While the move is long overdue, the White House was far from alone in not paying interns. More than 40 percent of internships remain unpaid today. 

The troubling impact of unpaid internships—on students from low-income backgrounds, in particular—is well-documented. For learners who cannot afford to work for free, unpaid internships represent immense barriers to the workforce. Many students are forced to choose between gaining valuable work experience that can set them on a path toward a career and the more immediate need of working a paid summer or part-time job. 

All employers should begin paying their interns. But as students begin their search for winter internships, higher education has a role to play, too. Colleges and universities can use their influence to pressure employers to end unpaid internships, while supporting their students who must pursue such opportunities while they still exist. Here are three ways that colleges and universities can address the persistent problem of unpaid internships. 

Advocate for Pay with Employer Partners

Some employers are remarkably unaware of the challenges surrounding unpaid internships. Higher-education institutions can help them understand by explaining the finances—rent, food, transportation, the costs of relocating—and spelling out why the valuable experiences a student might gain from an internship won’t pay the bills. 

For employers who offer unpaid internships for credit, institutions should explain that while this may seem like a good alternative to paying interns at first glance, the approach mostly adds up to another expense for the student, as students must pay tuition based on credit hours. Employers ultimately have no authority over whether an internship can receive credit, and for-credit internships often require the student to take extra steps, creating further hurdles to gaining valuable work experience. 

At George Mason University, employers are invited to attend webinars or 1:1 recruiting consultations where the university details how paying interns can help with recruitment, as well as with diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. In recent years, companies have doubled down on these efforts, and they are growing more receptive to the idea of paying interns as an equity imperative. Over the last four years at Mason, the percentage of companies offering unpaid internships through its relationship with the university has fallen by 12 percent. 

Offer Alternatives to Unpaid Internships
Institutions can also ensure that students avoid the high costs of many internships by helping to provide them with job-related learning experiences on campus. From embedding work-based learning directly into the curriculum to offering university-sponsored events and programs like case competitions and hackathons, institutions can do far more to strengthen connections between classrooms and careers. 

Institutions can also provide training for on-campus employers, such as university departments, on how to treat student interns more like employees. This includes providing professional development opportunities, explaining how skills gained on the job can help them reach their career goals, and having them apply for positions through Handshake.

The Growth Program at Mason, for example, offers this kind of structure to the work experiences of hundreds of students employed in the student affairs division each year.  Program components ensure that supervisors are setting goals, providing performance evaluations, and helping student staff make connections between their on-campus job and future careers. This especially benefits students from low-income families who receive federal work study as part of their financial aid package or first-generation students who work on-campus throughout college.  

Last academic year, more than 600 Mason students—ranging from peer mentors to recreation center staff—received feedback from their on-campus job supervisors to help them develop career-readiness competencies such as communication, teamwork, and critical thinking.  

Create Internship Funds
In an ideal world, all employers would compensate their interns. We’re not there yet, but in the meantime, it’s not realistic—or fair—to encourage students to avoid every unpaid internship. This would, in effect, shut out students with financial need from pursuing careers in fields like the performing arts, nonprofits, government, and healthcare, where many internships remain unpaid. Instead, institutions can set up programs that provide stipends and grants to students who must take on unpaid internships. Even institutions with limited resources can offer this kind of support, starting off small and then fundraising to help grow the program and ensure that it remains a budget priority. A recent report from New America found that community colleges used a various funding sources to provide work-based learning experiences spanning from the use of HEERF funds to sourcing donations from philanthropic organizations.

At Mason, students pursuing internships early in their academic careers can apply for an Unpaid Internship Scholarship. Students may receive up to $1,000 during the fall and spring semesters and up to $3,000 during the summer term. The program has had a great impact, helping single parents, students from low-income families, and other learners facing financial challenges pursue opportunities they otherwise would never have considered. 

“Since many internships are unpaid, it is often difficult to discover what we feel passionately about, as it is difficult to follow our passions when we have families that depend on us financially,” one scholarship recipient recently told us. “The Unpaid Internship Scholarship helps those individuals by taking the financial strain away.”

Colleges and universities have an important role to play in alleviating these financial strains on students. They must keep the pressure on employers to end unpaid internships while working to remove the barriers keeping too many students from pursuing their academic and career goals.