During my college summers, I worked in a drugstore, stationery store and a shop in a mall that sold upscale kitchen items. I felt extremely lucky my parents paid my college tuition, but I needed to earn my own spending money. These summer jobs were far from exciting, but they served a purpose. Most of the kids I went to college with had similar experiences. Not all our summer jobs were easy, but they allowed us to earn money and provided a break from college year stress. We never felt our entire future was defined by what we did during these summer months.
Nowadays, college kids don’t want summer jobs. They want to be summer professionals. They want internships. This is not to say an internship does not involve hard work; but it serves a different purpose than the summer jobs of years past. Gone are the days when many college kids went straight on to a graduate program. Now they finish college and go to work. But where? Jobs are increasingly difficult to find, and an internship (or multiple internships) on a college student’s resume eases the path to finding a full-time job. And with college so expensive, a higher-paying job can make a dent in the college loans so many kids are burdened with.
Unfortunately, all this internship pressure makes many students believe if they don’t have solid internships throughout their college years, they will never get a good job. They are marked for life and imagine years from now, someone at a party will surreptitiously whisper: “That’s the guy who didn’t have a great college internship …”
All this pressure to obtain an internship means that for many students, if given the choice between an unpaid internship and a regular paying job not in their intended field, they would take the former. This is a modern phenomenon. Can you imagine going into a local bank years ago and saying: “Hey, I’ll file your papers for eight hours a day and you don’t even have to pay me! Just give me a chance!” Some students now receive school credit for unpaid internships, but since they pay for the credits, this means students are actually paying to work for free. There is also the issue of whether using students as free labor is even legal. And studies have shown that unpaid internships are less likely to lead to full-time jobs than paid internships. But a brutal job market leads to desperate kids.
Another problem with these unpaid internships is they tend to favor kids who are already privileged. True, there are college students who take unpaid internships and also work a second job, incur more student debt and live on ramen noodles for the summer. But the reality is, the unpaid intern is more likely to be a student from a wealthier background whose parents offer subsidy. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Most kids who have unpaid internships still work incredibly hard. The problem comes when parents act as if having a child with an unpaid internship whom they subsidize is a sign of superior parenting. They pat themselves on the back because they can provide this opportunity. Unfortunately, they often forget to remind their kids not to take such opportunity for granted. Kids come away believing: “Hey, my parents can afford to let me intern for free. I deserve that. And if I work hard, success will come my way because I deserve that, too.”
Does this mean hard-working kids who lack the means to work for free don’t deserve success? And what happens when our kids don’t get that promotion/great job even if they work hard because the real world isn’t always fair? Will our children automatically perceive themselves as failures? Will they be confused because success didn’t come their way? Conspicuous consumption permeates our society; the unpaid internship creates another level of entitlement in our children that is bound to be shattered as expectations go unfulfilled.
Most parents hope to prepare their children for a good future. But the reality is, modern parents go way beyond offering support and preparation. We push our kids with cattle prods to become super-successful often to satisfy our own egos, and if this means providing a full subsidy while our kids work for free, all the better. Try announcing in a roomful of driven parents that your college age son or daughter is working at a summer camp. I guarantee there will be some internal eye-rolling, whispers you are lacking in the parental skill department and an unspoken prediction your child is doomed to a bleak future.
I know an exceptional young man who is putting himself through college entirely on his own. He works full time and attends school at night. He asked me: “What is it with this unpaid internship stuff? How can anyone just work for free. Don’t they have bills to pay?” Let’s give our own children a reality check. Jews have always emphasized the importance of education, but we should still make our children appreciate not everyone has the opportunity to obtain higher education. And if your child has a great internship (that you still might have to subsidize) or an unpaid internship (that you completely subsidize), make him understand he is privileged to have such an opportunity. It is not his by right.
This article was published in The Jewish Advocate on May 27, 2016.
