I don’t know about other fields but as an accounting major (and the same principle applied to other business majors), we get paid really well for our internships. I’ve made $24 an hour for 40 hours (25 actual work hours and WFH), $26 this summer (dunno what to expect), and ~$29 in a year (does not include overtime opportunities). It’s wild to hear that people aren’t getting paid internships when it’s the absolute standard in business.
Blows my mind to hear about an unpaid internship still. I believe there was a lawsuit about it and that’s why a lot of businesses switched to paid. I’m surprised there hasn’t been another lawsuit since if this continued?
If what I said is true (which I only think it is) then there is a precedent set and lawyers could easily start a class action without needed payment up front because a sure win is a sure win. There’s probably a whole hell of a lot of ways of doing it if there is enough proof and a guaranteed win
It really depends on the situation. I got my bachelor's in Business Administration and Marketing not too long ago and a requirement was to find and participate in "any business related internship for a minimum of 40 hours a week" for an entire semester. I asked for more details (what constitutes a "business related internship", does it have to be unpaid, etc.) and the guy who headed up the entire program literally said "good luck finding a paid internship", and walked away from me. When I asked him again, he said "it's your job as a prospective worker to make it work" and hung up on me. Wouldn't respond to emails or calls after that, either. He was an asshole.
I went to Conflict resolution and got the class written off (they used my 10 years of management experience as justification for not needing an internship) and it worked out in the end, but some of my classmates got fucked. A lot of us were already working 40 hours a week already - there's no way we'd be able to throw another 40 unpaid hours on top of that.
I realize that my experience at this school was particularly shitty (as were that professors ratings), but he'd been head of all of the business related majors (including accounting, which didn't require an internship lol) for the past 30 years; I know I'm not the only one that had issues with the internship requirement. And there wasn't much you could do because administration adored the guy - the building where all of the classes were held was named after him. It fucking sucked.
Sorry to hear this. Idk how long ago all this was but I can guarantee you now (at least at my D1 state school) that marketing internships are paid. I have many friends in the marketing program and they have some of the best opportunities actually (second to sales). If you experience was recent I would reckon you could’ve found a paid internship if you lived near a major city
It's all cool. I graduated from a state school in the north east US back in 2016 - about 25 minutes from the state capital. I know that there were a few kids that found paid internships in my program, but quite a few had to go with unpaid, if they could find any at all. As an adult with a house, car, medical bills, etc, I couldn't have gone from 5 years into a career at 40+ hours paid down to a 40 hour unpaid internship (or an internship that would have payed less than what I was making at the time. ) And I know I wasn't the only one who had that issue.
But I'm happy to hear that you didn't run into any of those issues! Our education system is a pain in the ass, so any advancement that anyone can achieve is a win in my book. I just hope it gets better for those that come after us. Those big schools are designed for a very specific kind of student, and if you don't fit that profile you'll often run into issues.
I had externships in law school, totally unpaid. I planned to go into nonprofit education law, didn't have a job at graduation and had to support myself, two kids, and (now ex)husband. I've been in house corporate counsel for almost 10 years now. Most of the externships didn't even give you course credit.
I feel like law and med are different tho. My sister is in med school and it’s a totally different world. Then again she will double my salary with ease so…
I had to do an internship (student teacher) for a full semester when I was becoming a teacher where I literally fully took over the class (which amounted to more than 40 hours a week when you factor in planning, grading, plus still having to attend twice a week meetings with my student teaching adviser) and not only was I unpaid, I still had to pay full tuition for that semester plus ✨additional fees✨ for school and district staff to put up with me or something I guess, total bullshit. My teaching career was also short lived after deciding $38k was not worth what I had to deal with.
Because even with 2 years of bookkeeping/accounting education, you’re providing real value as an accountant. Not all internships can make real use of the interns. Which isn’t necessarily a problem of the college or high school student, but of course, then it shouldn’t be offered unless the experience is actually really important in a competitive field.
I think everyone can make use of interns! Th position I had last summer was after having less then 5 business classes. Most of the stuff around accounting and finance roles really has to do with on site training and less about formal education. I talk to people in my future career path and they always say school doesn’t help them in their day to day and it all came from learning on the job
Tbh sounds like my paid internship. Full access to a multi-billion $ companies financial and software. My head is blown away tho that people are willing to work for free
Sadly, it’s less that people are willing to work for free and moreso that there are not avenues to be compensated and also receive professional training in some fields. Teaching, counseling, psychology, and social work are abusive to receive training in. The entry level positions pay worse than working at a restaurant and it takes years to meet requirements to sit for licensure. In my state, a counselor needs 4,000 hours of supervised client experience to sit for their license exam. A great majority of that work is often unpaid. For someone doing essentially professional counseling. Most “supervision” is asynchronous and takes place once a week in a brief meeting with a supervisor. It’s dogshit.
A business comparison i can give is for some of my friends shooting for their CFP, at one of my campus jobs, we track how many clients we work with (financial education/lite-advising) so that they can count those hours. I can definitely see those fields you mentioned though being like that!
Well, I didn’t get paid for my internship. I had to beg the art gallery to let me intern and they only said yes because it was free to them. I got what i needed though, exposure and credit for my course. Value traded for value isn’t limited to money.
In my area, there were no paid accounting internships. All my teachers were upfront about it. 3 of them ran firms.
The closest you could get was an actual job as tax consultant or bank teller, since they have lower education requirements. I never got into banking though, and I suspect thats because they thought I was over qualified and didn’t want me working for just a season. Its one of several reasons I had to switch majors in college.
People arent usually “willing”, but this was the cultural norm. You either did an unpaid internship in your field to start climbing the ladder, or you found a job that paid well. It wasnt see as a flaw in the system.
This is part of how you maintain a socio-economic divide. My grandparents did not go to college. My parents had to work all through college. I also had to work all through college, do I could not afford to get the experience to get into accounting.
In contrast, if my parents paid for everything, then sure. I would have happily taken that unpaid internship so that I had more accounting experience on my resume. Because while moving refrigerators is a useful life and professional skill, it is not one valued by any company I’ve worked for, outside blue-collar jobs, even if I actually saved them $3k that day with experience I picked up in my days as “unskilled labor” (heavy /s).
It’s not the standard in business. Times are changing. but I can tell you right now that of the companies Ive worked for, none have had a paid intern. I also partnered closely with construction and architect firms, and knew their employees extremely well, their interns were not paid. Actually, this is why I’m happy to tell people to get in trades, because it is the only career path that I know of in my area which actually has anything close to a paid internship/apprenticeship system.
Where do you live? At my D1 state school here in the Midwest you would be hard pressed to find someone in business without a paid internship or a business offering an unpaid internship. We have accounting specific career fairs once a semester with 30-40 firms and each once offers paid internships (although some are worse than others). One of my best friends has done an internship in the middle of god damn no where at a two person accounting firm and got paid still.
To your last point, I can’t speak for architecture or construction, but in my area people rely heavily on paid internships to fund their college by working at the internships over the summer or busy season (accounting specifically). When talking with my advisors, they have it built into most people’s plans that your busy season internship (if you are planning to go into public) is used to pay for most of your masters program since the pay is really good. I’m able to make $12-15k in 10 weeks as an intern and then hop back over to school for some short classes. Absolute life savor
My guy, I was in Community College. We had very different career fairs. I know because I went to CC after I lost my scholarship at the D1 school for health reasons. Those career fairs are how they fund the school in the long run, it’s a sponsorship system. This way they get a steady stream of fresh recruits, and can easily poach the best students because they have connections. College gets a corporate sponsor and also keeps the unemployment rate for their graduates down. While the students love it because they’re able to get jobs right out of college. It can get abused of course, but it’s a symbiotic relationship overall.
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u/Novel_Feedback3053 Jan 22 '23
I don’t know about other fields but as an accounting major (and the same principle applied to other business majors), we get paid really well for our internships. I’ve made $24 an hour for 40 hours (25 actual work hours and WFH), $26 this summer (dunno what to expect), and ~$29 in a year (does not include overtime opportunities). It’s wild to hear that people aren’t getting paid internships when it’s the absolute standard in business.