Unpaid internships: benefit of experience contends with financial compensation

~Southeast internship coordinators share their views on unpaid internships

Paid and unpaid internships are now in the spotlight after a New York district court judge ruled in favor of two interns in a lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures.

The interns sued the company because they felt that they deserved compensation for their work. After the ruling, the country is now debating whether or not all internships should require payment.

Wayne Hoover, an internship coordinator in the psychology department at Southeast Missouri State University, disagreed with the judge's decision. Hoover said instead that he believes that interns should focus on the experience that they are gaining and not complete an internship based solely on compensation.

"If you can get paid for the internship, more power to you," Hoover said. "But I think most interns got into [their internship] with the idea that that's not why I am doing it. I am doing it for a better reason."

Deseray Helton, an anthropology and historic preservation major, completed an unpaid internship last summer. Helton worked in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in historic preservation. Helton thinks that the experience she received outweighed the money she would have earned at a summer job.

"I am a double major, so this internship helped me navigate how to combine them in my future. ... It was hard not getting paid, but I feel like the knowledge gained was worth it," Helton said.

Internship coordinator for KRCU, Jacob McCleland, believes that even if interns are not paid, there are still strong benefits to interning.

"It's so practical, and you get so much hands-on experience," McCleland said. "You're working in a professional environment and you're networking and you're meeting people and you're building up that professional network while you're interning. That's really tough to do when you're sitting in the classroom."

Helton believes that companies or organizations should provide some sort of compensation for interns, such as travel or accommodation fees. Helton also said that completing an unpaid internship can be difficult for some students.

"Not having a stable place to live during an internship can make it harder, especially if you aren't getting paid," Helton said. "So for some people it is necessary to look into housing before deciding on whether to apply for an internship. It's really hard even after the fact, taking the whole summer when you don't get paid and then coming back and not having any money."

Hoover thinks that with today's economic situation, making payment for internships mandatory will have a negative impact on students.

"If you are going to require that they be paid, there'd be very few people, very few organizations out there that would be able to afford to do it, and you would end up eliminating most of the potential [internship opportunities]," Hoover said.

McCleland believes that students still will be able to gain experience through other ways, even if paid internships become the only internships available.

"I think it would be a shift away from internships to volunteering," McCleland said. "There would be fewer internships available on the market, I think. What I think you would have are more recent graduates willing to volunteer at a business or organization or an agency or whatever they want to do to develop that experience."