This time last year, senior Finance major Adam Lott was commuting to and from his 9-to-5 job in Los Angeles traffic two days out of the week. Like out of a scene from “The Odd Couple,” Lott would return home to greet his roommates, make himself dinner and then reflect on the day’s work for which he wasn’t getting paid. A Finance major, he would then start homework.
This is a scene many juniors and seniors find familiar when completing what is now resume-essential and, for some, a graduation requirement: the internship. Most go unpaid, but that hasn’t stopped around 75 percent of Pepperdine students from completing one while still enrolled, according to the Career Center’s Director Amy Adams. Dubbed the unofficial “King of Internships,” Lott is on his sixth one, finally getting paid.
“The number of internships is not important,” Lott said. “It’s necessary to have one or two [internships], but sometimes to get those, it takes others. And that’s assuming you end up liking that direction you end up choosing.”
At Pepperdine and colleges nationwide, students are turning a blind eye to the price of unpaid internships in hopes of growing their resumes. A one-credit internship costs $1,266 per semester at Seaver. The Dean’s Office offers a summer internship scholarship to cover the cost of two units of intern-credit.
“As with all classes, you pay a flat tuition rate for any number of units from 12 to 18, so as long as you take that internship as part of your normal course load, it should not cost extra,” Adams wrote in an email. “Employers now expect graduates to have at least two to three relevant work or internship experiences on their resume before they get their first job.”
Among ethical and monetary disputes, workers now question the role of “real world” experience in unpaid internship programs, and Lott has seen both sides of the struggle.
“I’ve had it where I was unofficially being taken advantage of because they knew I wanted the experience,” Lott said. “So in that sense, it was unjust. But in the end both parties are better off. I’d rather have it on my resume than not.”
Lott also encountered companies that fostered an appropriate business setting, one where he developed finance skills while still unsalaried. To subsidize his transportation expenses, Lott used the Randall Internship Program through Pepperdine. The program is open to all students taking at least one internship unit for graded credit in the fall or spring, and it currently offers up to $500 in compensation for gas.
Senior Media Production major Harrison Muecke waited until his second semester of senior year to begin his first internship — one that is paid. Declaring his major after sophomore year forced Muecke to play catch-up with classes, furthering his role as a full-time student. Muecke secured an internship at a production company for $10 an hour through his fraternity chapter’s connections. While outsiders may peg this as nepotism, Muecke sees it as just “making life a lot easier.”
Lott and Muecke have not considered International Program’s, (IP) summer internships abroad because of the cost. Four programs, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Lausanne and London, provide a four-unit internship course with additional language and history course units offered. The average cost for a summer internship abroad through IP is $6,505.
According to IP Dean of Admissions and Students Affairs Jeff Hamilton, most internships abroad go unpaid due to paid-work visas. If money forces students to forgo the opportunity, Hamilton suggests students reassess their options.
“IP encourages students to meet with a Financial Assistance representative to review their grant/scholarship/loan package,” Hamilton wrote in an email. “Many students are surprised to discover that their financial assistance package in the summer is often very similar to what it is during the school year which helps offset or even completely cover the tuition and IP fees. Again, though, each student should weigh for themselves the benefit and value of an experience in relation to their own unique financial situation.”
The deadline for the IP scholarship application is tomorrow, Feb. 3.
The first step in landing an internship, according to both Lott and the Career Center, is starting at a nonprofit or government organization. Here, students gain footing in a less structured, formalized setting. At the core, the differences lie in whether the company must follow the Fair Labor Standards Act. Although encouraged, nonprofit internships do not have to meet Department of Labor guidelines. For-profit private sector must meet legal criteria in a “test” for hiring unpaid interns.
According to the 2011 Student Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, paid interns “were more likely to get a job offer, have a job in hand by the time they graduated, and receive a higher starting salary offer than their peers who undertook an unpaid internship or no internship at all.”
The explanation behind the inequality lies in the more “real” experience the interns received. Professionalism and money were the key factors.
While the economy remains stagnant, more unpaid internships pop up. In March, the Los Angeles Times introduced the nation’s 13.7 million unemployed as the new interns of the labor market, an unfamiliar sight at odds with the young, post-grad ideal. Most recently, a pair of unpaid interns from the film “Black Swan” opened a class-action lawsuit against the film’s producer, Fox Searchlight Pictures. One of the interns was 42. The two former interns are seeking back pay for their six-month work and are filing an injunction that would prevent the company from hiring future unpaid interns.
