NACE report on unpaid internships

The National Association of Colleges and Employers released a report on unpaid internships. The headline is that unpaid internships benefit the educational experience of students.

I worry that this will be an excuse for companies not to pay students for their work. As a result, fewer students from disadvantaged backgrounds will be able to gain the professional experiences, networking opportunities, and experiential learning benefits of their more affluent peers. Furthermore, if one goes beyond the headline they realize that although unpaid internships "still lead to important gains for many of our students" they are "not as empirically beneficial as paid internships." 

That said, as highlighted in the report, professional work experiences have a material, positive impact on academic outcomes. While the report argues that we need to drive more "structured integration of internship experiences into the academic curriculum,"having worked with thousands of companies and universities we appreciate the difficulty of this especially without burdening employers or taking away academic freedom.

To that, in cases where a more structured program is not feasible, a more informal mechanism where students gain a variety of short-term professional experiences throughout their academic career ("MicroInternships") can provide additional value. Students benefit from experiential learning, while helping form a real-time feedback loop between companies and universities. In addition, the larger number of opportunities for these MicroInternships allows more students to participate, while creating additional data points to ensure curriculum is aligned to professional needs.

Furthermore, many companies may not be able to afford a traditional summer intern, or be unsure about the return associated with one. And even those for which money is not a constraining factor, the other costs associated with internships is material. As such, at Parker Dewey we believe that MicroInternships are an effective solution. Not only do they provide a flexible resource for companies and the opportunity for students to gain real, professional experiences, they also help ensure that there is a mutual skill and cultural fit prior to the 10 week commitment of an internship or co-op.