I think he understates (or undervalues) the class-screening effect, which I think is really pernicious. There are significant career tracks that you have to pay to enter, by donating unpaid labor. This is, in my view, a bad thing -- it allows class prejudice to masquerade as meritocracy ("Is it my fault if everyone who had an acceptable resume, with the right internships, summers in the Hamptons?").
True enough, and that is the only aspect of the internship experience that really bothers me; there's no way I could do all these unpaid internships if I didn't happen to have free housing in various cities. But on the other stuff, like how this supposedly causes too much identification with employers and reduces incentive to unionize etc., I think he's dead on.
I'm with you on class problems (as I try to address in the post at my typepad site), but it seems there would be ways to address that. In any case, I'm not convinced that internships end up being much more class biased than does college itself. Many universities have internship grants for students, and most all competitive internships are going to cull from good colleges, which are already socioeconomically troubled. The place to work there seems to be in college admissions and grant-departments.
It's one more barrier, and it's a class-based knowledge/attitude barrier as much as a purely financial one. Not only does a poor kid have to be able to fund college, they have to be able to fund unpaid work, and they have to have a sense of how important that sort of thing will be to their future career tracks.
how this supposedly causes too much identification with employers
You know, I don't know that this is a larger social problem, but it's related to a widespread attitude that really annoys me -- that an employee should be pathetically grateful for the opportunity to do work. You should be so desperate for your job that starting out unpaid is no hardship; working is a joy and a privilege. That's nonsense: people, even in interesting jobs, work for pay and are valuable to their employers. The employer isn't doing the employee a favor by allowing them to work -- they should be bargaining on a level playing field.
I'm not convinced that internships end up being much more class biased than does college itself.
I disagree. I think it feeds on itself, and the effect is magnified over time.
I know two people from working-class backgrounds who scrambled hard (due to lack of money, social capital, etc.) to get through college. They made it, but although both would have liked work in social services and/or social justice work, they were simply unable to cross the traditional bridges to such work.
(Bridges meaning both formal unpaid internships and low-level paid positions that they could reliably count on turning into moderately well-paying jobs within 2-4 years.)
Also, I suspect that people without a lot of college-going history in their families are more likely to graduate with debt. That just increases their inability to work at a $22K-a-year job and wait for something better.
Yes, I've strayed from internships. And fwiw, I actually agree with most of Ezra's other points about the NYT op-ed.
Speaking as someone from a reasonably comfortable but poor social capital background (i.e., we're not talking a hypothetical poor kid, but anyone not of the 'My dad went to Harvard too!' set), unpaid internships absolutely suck. When I was in college, I had to make money in order to pay for books and travel back to campus the next year. That meant that when I considered internships, they had to be paid internships, which pretty much meant I wasn't going to be doing journalism or social work or consider politics & policy as a career.
I'm not sure competitive university grants (not available at all schools by the way) would help much. Chances are, they'd help like most grants do -- the brightest of the bright would get help and do fine, but it still means the comparably qualified poorer kid gets screwed while the Hamptonified roommate gets to make connections all summer 'cause daddy's paying for the apartment.
Plus, I'm not too keen on having state education money going to pay an intern so a company doesn't have to pay a going rate.
Cala pretty much sums up the problem I have with Ezra's argument; unpaid internships don't help people like her at all. I come from essentially the opposite position (lots of social capital but little money), so I've been able to take advantage of them, but there aren't that many people like me, so the system mostly just helps rich people with connections.
On the other hand, the reason a lot of these internships are unpaid is that the organizations (especially public sector and non-profit ones) really can't afford to pay interns, so the choice for them is between unpaid internships and no interns at all. This is, I think, one of Ezra's stronger points. Also, in my experience private-sector internships are often paid, at least in industries that can afford it and are in need of interns.
I have mixed feelings. Emotionally, I agree with Cala.
I do, however, make an exception for progressive political organizations. I want those interns to be paid, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect the stingily-funded non-proft to do the paying.
I like the right-wing's model, and I'd really like to see internship funding that followed an intern. Most of it would go to the intern, and maybe a donation could go to the non-profit. That would sweeten the deal a bit.
The other thing that's important is health insurance. It's going to take a while to reform the healthcare system, but, in the meantime, we need to figure out a patchwork system.
A lot of people suggest taking time off from college--a semester to work or something. I never could do this, because I got my health insurance through school.
Weirdly, this is an area where I think poor, lower-middle and many middle class kids who go to elite schools are at something of a disadvantage over slightly lower-tier schools.
A lot of schools have semster in Washington programs where people stidy in Washington and get credit for an internship. Harvard, at least, and I'm guessing that the same holds true for Yale and Princeton--though I don't know about Dartmouth, doesn't give credit for internships.
So, Harvard students all compete for the summer internships when everyone can have their pick of the best. I know of people who are not as bright but were able to intern for credit and then got good jobs.
The whole idea of unpaid internships really pisses me off. Several times in college, I had Really Cool People flat out ask me to come work for them for free during the summer, but I couldn't do it because I had to eat, and instead I worked as the girl who hauled monitors around the building setting up computer labs for $5.15 an hour.
Also, I've found that, as alluded to above, unpaid work is just plain not that good for your professional development, at least in a learning sense. I got a grant to do unpaid public interest work last summer, so even though I was getting money, from the standpoint of the two organizations I was working for, I was doing it for free. I was vastly underutilized, undertrained, poorly supervised, and generally got quite little out of the experience. I made some decent connections and got to be interviewed by reporters and be on NPR, but did I learn stuff and/or gain real skils? Not that much.
When people are paying you, they (more often than when they're not, at least) make damn sure you are doing stuff that's worth their money.
I was vastly underutilized, undertrained, poorly supervised, and generally got quite little out of the experience. I made some decent connections and got to be interviewed by reporters and be on NPR, but did I learn stuff and/or gain real skils? Not that much.
I did a semester in DC in undergrad and had a similar experience, only without the connections or NPR. I would have been better off in another internship or, better yet, a paying job.
At the time I had no understanding of the issues surrounding unpaid work. I lived with my parents for the entirety of undergrad and went to a public school, but my family could afford to support me at that level.
I'm sure many (perhaps most) unpaid internships are like silvana's experience, but not all of them are that bad. Sure, an organization that could pay its interns but doesn't is unlikely to take them seriously as employees, but many organizations really can't afford to pay them and some of those groups use them for actual work that really does help their professional development.
And they're not necessarily class-biased; minority students in particular can get all sorts of financial aid to enable them to do internships, especially in DC. As I've mentioned before, I interned in a senator's office last summer. Although some of the interns were rich white kids from elite schools, the rest were, well, not. This was the school with the largest contingent of students (by far).
Sorry to get so defensive about this, but I really don't think unpaid internships as a whole are as big a problem as people are saying. The major problems with our educational system lie elsewhere.
From my point of view, I don't see why corporations should *ever* offer unpaid internships. The only possible reason I can see is them being greedy bastards and/or ensuring the appropriate class/wealth barriers to entry into their 'club'.
As with others on this thread, there's simply no way I could (or can) afford to take on any unpaid work. Nor could anyone else from a background like mine and I can't see any good reason why those barriers are being erected except i) greed and ii) a deliberately exclusionary policy.
With non-profit organisations on the other hand I can see why some short-term unpaid internships might exist.
One of my friends from college landed a really prestigious unpaid journalism internship in NYC after her junior year and the only way she could afford to do it was by stripping at Scores at night. That's not just the stuff of Jerry Springer folklore.
17 - Really truly. She was pulling in about twice what I was making at my paid internship on Long Island.
18 - She really is quite the overachiever, isn't she? "If I'm going to work for free, I'm going to work at the best place there is. And if I'm going to have to strip to pay for it, I'm going to work at the best club in the city." (Which it was back in the day. I don't know how it stacks up now.)
Look, As Wolfson and I discussed in comments long Ago, I was friends in high school with a girl who, at University of Chicago, was well known. Besides Rather impressive intellecutal acheivments (at least According to Wolfson, I wasn't monitoring her Scholastic progress) there, she also got a job at a Club, stripping, fairly early on in her time in-Habiting the windy coty. Without making her name Easily found through a search engine (the archives Contain* it, I think), I recommend that anyone who Has deduced it check out an interesting web page That I found about her father. The web page is Enlightening, and can be found in Wikipedia. *It is Regrettable that her name wasn't google-proofed.
I am teh idiot, comment box formatting isn't the same as comment page formatting. I recommend viewing this comment with a fairly-sized comment window. Ignore 22 and instead read this:
Look, As Wolfson and I discussed in comments long
Ago, I was friends in high school with a girl who, at
University of Chicago, was well known. Besides
Rather impressive intellecutal acheivments (at least
According to Wolfson, I wasn't monitoring her
Scholastic progress) there, she also got a job at a
Club, stripping, fairly early on in her time in-
Habiting the windy city. Without making her name
Easily found through a search engine (the archives
Contain* it, I think), I recommend that anyone who
Has deduced it check out an interesting web page
That I found about her father. The web page is
Enlightening; the name to search for is Harold. *It is
Regrettable that her name wasn't google-proofed.
How many corporate internships really are unpaid, though? I just checked the internship listings on my schools MonsterTRAK site, and the overwhelming majority were both corporate and paid. The main exceptions were internships in journalism and publishing, and there I'll grant that the companies take advantage of the large demand, thereby excluding people with less money/social capital. Engineers, though, are set.
(Public sector and non-profit internships, of course, were mostly unpaid.)
Sure, but that's a pretty small segment of the working world right there. And I suspect many (probably not all) of those organizations can't afford to hire people for pay.
But there's the major problem when the media companies, where there's a lot of money being made, do not pay much if anything. Although the small magazines may lack the funds, the number of interns in the relatively rich television, music, and movie industries that go unpaid is pretty atrocious.
that's a pretty small segment of the working world
Yes and no. Beyond politics and the arts, there's the rest of the nonprofit sector. And that's fairly substantial -- about 10% of the U.S. labor force, or 12 million people. (2001 stats, may have changed a little.)
There's also a problem, I presume, given that politics and the media are two professions which exert significant influence. Two of the central 'opinion-forming' professions which erect substantial class-barriers.
There's also a problem, I presume, given that politics and the media are two professions which exert significant influence. Two of the central 'opinion-forming' professions which erect substantial class-barriers.
Right, which is why we have a whole pundit class which thinks that the economy is doing great, and can be counted on to salivate over tax cuts and welfare reform and anything that bashes the poor generally.
I agree with all of 28-32, but that just shows that the problem with unpaid internships is much more specific than a lot of people are saying. I still don't see how it can be fixed, though.
Also, I think a lot of news/media organizations have unpaid internships because they benefit from all companies in the sector being lumped together in one group when people discuss the practice. I mean, I understand why The American Prospect might not be able to pay its interns, but NBC or Vogue? Come on.
I think a lot of those media conglomerates get away with it because there are so many (rich) kids who are willing to work for free because the jobs seem so glamorous. This doesn't work in other industries, so they pay their interns.
Another problem in changing things is that the amount of people who can afford shorter-term unpaid internships is larger than the amount of people most would consider unambiguously rich in the trust-fund sense of the word. So you end up with people who are clearly middle-class - but also clearly have a fair amount of privileges - resenting being lumped in with the rich, defending the current set-up because they worked hard to get their kids the chance to be unpaid interns.
Why you don't get a lot of the same people saying their kids should be paid in internships where the employer should be able to afford it is beyond me.
teofilo in 14: Sorry to get so defensive about this, but I really don't think unpaid internships as a whole are as big a problem as people are saying.
Now, I'm going to get a bit defensive.
I did have one arts-type job where I got paid minimum wage. The person who got promoted to assistant director was a big-time trust-funded person. It was a bit like Vogue, though not particularly fashionable-- this was, after all, an old-time Boston sort of place--in that the people in upper-level positioms were expected to be educated at certain types of schools and to maintain a certain type of look. As I later said, in another job interview for a business job, "it was a great place to work, if you could afford to." Beyond that, I don't know that much about how this affects the arts.
I agree with Drymala, though, that it hurts politics enormously. Outside of some of the staffers for members of the Congressional Black Caucus, I don't know how many people on the HIll, actually know what it's like to be without health insurance or to have really crappy insurance. I think that this contributes to a lack of urgency in dealing with the healthcare crisis.
teofilo, have you ever not filled a prescription, because you couldn't afford it? I have. Whenever I look at jobs now, the first thing I ask myself is, "What are the health benefits like?" I resent the hell out of the fact that tthis is even a consideration.
Mark Schmitt wrote a post a while ago praising someone for hiring a staffer who had actually been on welfare. We need people who can do statistical analysis and have mastered the policy details, but we also need the moral urgency of people whose own lives have been affected by policies.
This is the chief complaint against the Kewl Kidz articulated by Atrios and Digby. Once you're in, you'll always land on your feet, so the actual policies don't really matter. For the rest of us, these issues affect our lives.
Some very rich people are capable of great empathy or a sense of the concerns of the common man. I don't want to bar those people from politics. FDR was an aristocrat, but for the most part, he had it. Most middle to upper-middle class kids don't have that sort of moral imagination. Hell, most people don't. For most of us, we're really only able to care passionately about things which have ffected us (and those we know) personally.
I don't have any data backing this up, but I would guess from the way resentment seems to work in politics that, if the issued is framed as a straight up rich vs. poor one, the people saying "but we're not really rich" are more likely to defend the system of unpaid internships than not.
It matters in the arts because I want our art (that is, literature, visual art, drama, performance, music, etc. etc.) to be urgent and reflect all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, not just one background or experience. This is not so much about internships, I guess; more about having the disposable income to pursue these endeavors, although the internship thing is just as prevalent in, say, the theater community as anywhere else.
In theater, for example, every year we have 75 plays that open in New York depicting what it's like to be either (a) young and rich and alienated, (b) married and rich and alienated or (c) unmarried and powerful and rich and alienated. I'd trade them all for another play like Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train, written by a former prison counselor.
Look, I don't mean to be defending the current system; I think it would be great if all internships were paid, and I certainly agree that politics suffers from a lack of poor people (art too, I guess, though I don't know much about it). My point is just that the money to pay interns has to come from somewhere, and I don't see where everyone is proposing to get it.
My point is just that the money to pay interns has to come from somewhere, and I don't see where everyone is proposing to get it.
Apologies for repeating myself, but I think a large portion of this problem can be solved by funder education. Nonprofits will be able to pay their interns when their own funders understand that it is not, in the long run, more efficient or somehow better to wring as much free work out of as many people as possible.
(Some funders get this already; some nonprofits already operate within an unhealthy purer-than-thou worldview when it comes to bare-bones payrolls. Still and all....)
Have I told that joke about the difference between an Irishman and an American here? I can't find it googling the site. In any case:
An American, walking home from work after ten grueling hours at his factory job, looks up at the big house on the hill and says: "One of these days I'm going to have a house just like that!"
An Irishman walking home looks up at the big house on the hill and says: "One of these days I'm going to get that bastard!"
My sympathies are often on the Irish side of the divide.
I know no one in the art biz—except for people working at the Sm/th50n/an—who doesn't have terrible, terrible health insurance that nevertheless constitutes a big chunk of her expenses. Even among the married couples, most of the spouses (other artists, nonprofiteers, ne'erdowells) do not have jobs that provide partner benefits. And I just quit my job to freelance full-time (hooray!) which means I have just two weeks left of bona fide health insurance before I blindly settle on the cheapest possible insurance option. I'ts a pretty screwy life and I'm always worried that I'll get sick and decline seeing a doctor in order to save money. Or have to have dental surgery.
Have I mentioned that I find stoking my resentments and grudges to be a fantastic motivator for getting off my ass and doing stuff (in my case, writing)? And most of the people I've spoken to who had extraordinary social mobility (of the type I suppose I'm working for) confessed the same sorts of feelings. Like, "It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!"
Well, with persistence and hard work, the Irishman's odds of achieving his goals are an awful lot higher than the American's.
True, but this does no more than re-state the well known proposition that if you fail to acheive a reasonable standard of performance, there are two things you can do, improve your performance or lower the standard.
Seriously, though, I have to say that this actually rings true to me: "It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!" This does not speak well of human nature, however.
Hey, 'Smasher: You got mugged? Or does Yglesias have another roommate? If it's you, that's awful. (I suppose it's awful even if it happened to someone I don't know, but you know what I mean.)
True, but this does no more than re-state the well known proposition that if you fail to acheive a reasonable standard of performance, there are two things you can do, improve your performance or lower the standard.
I think of it as more pointing out that the Irishman is a realist, and the American is living in a fantasy world.
I'ts a pretty screwy life and I'm always worried that I'll get sick and decline seeing a doctor in order to save money.
You dropped "for beer" off the end the sentence.
"It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!"
The problem with this is that if, as I believe, the world is much less meritocratic than we like to pretend (at least over the short run), you end up with a lot of angry people who weren't able to show the fuckers through no fault of their own.
The real way to do this is to lower the cost of producing a play or being an art type somehow. It's extraordinary to realize that there are people in the blogosphere who've somehow made their bones in the opinion world on the basis of free software and $X/mo in hosting costs. And no, I have no idea how you would go about lowering those costs. (If you figure it out, let me know, so that I can steal your idea and make a lot of money.)
SCMT -- it's getting so one can put together a film or a CD or some sort of digital product for mere pennies compared to the past. It gets cheaper every day. Theater is tougher, because you have to have a physical space in a set time, but there are ways, and there are outlets for people if they get together with collaborators and save up some $$. The Fringe Festival, for instance.
I would stick with COBRA for now. That way, you'll have time to sort through your options.
Massachusetts is a safe place to be in the individual market. It's guaranteed-issue and community rated. They can bar coverage of pre-existing conditions for up to 6 months if your coverage has lapsed for more than 63 days, but that's it. The state is dominated by non-profit insurers. Blue Cross is still Blue Cross--nt some Anthem/ Wellpoint for profit deal.
Contrast this with most states where insurers can attach riders refusing to cover any condition you already have. In California, they can't do that, so they just refuse to underwrite you.
In California, Blue Cross has been retroactively examining the applications of everyone who bought individual policies when they file claims. They're claiming that people failed tp disclose their pre-existing conditions.
Matthew Holt had two posts up on this commenting on articles in the LA Times:
Yenny Shu of Los Angeles, for instance, says her coverage was canceled after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 46. In its letter rescinding her coverage, Blue Cross allegedly told her that she failed to disclose her exposure to the hepatitis B virus when she was a child.
A California Blue Cross employee testified in secret last year that the state's largest health-plan company routinely canceled policies of sick members after looking for inconsistencies — not fraud — in their applications. Experts say, however, that state law allows only deliberate omissions or misstatements as grounds for canceling health coverage.
Joe D, do you have plans to do the DC Fringe Festival? I'm reasonably good friends with one of that show's producers/founders, and if I can put you in contact with her or whatever, lemme know.
We got robbed two months ago, so now I'm ready to become whatever it is a Republican becomes when he gets robbed. (Entrenched? Emboldened? More powerful than you can possible imagine?)
Oh, and BG! We were home. But we were asleep. I didn't recognize the distinction between robbed and burgled before and I continue to bungle it up. The important thing to take away, I think, is that no matter what happened before, Dirk Nowitzki put up 50 points on the big board this evening. Also, I saw a rather great photography exhibit, but that's neither here nor there.
I agree with Ezra.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:07 PM
I think he understates (or undervalues) the class-screening effect, which I think is really pernicious. There are significant career tracks that you have to pay to enter, by donating unpaid labor. This is, in my view, a bad thing -- it allows class prejudice to masquerade as meritocracy ("Is it my fault if everyone who had an acceptable resume, with the right internships, summers in the Hamptons?").
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:13 PM
True enough, and that is the only aspect of the internship experience that really bothers me; there's no way I could do all these unpaid internships if I didn't happen to have free housing in various cities. But on the other stuff, like how this supposedly causes too much identification with employers and reduces incentive to unionize etc., I think he's dead on.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:24 PM
I'm with you on class problems (as I try to address in the post at my typepad site), but it seems there would be ways to address that. In any case, I'm not convinced that internships end up being much more class biased than does college itself. Many universities have internship grants for students, and most all competitive internships are going to cull from good colleges, which are already socioeconomically troubled. The place to work there seems to be in college admissions and grant-departments.
Posted by Ezra | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:37 PM
It's one more barrier, and it's a class-based knowledge/attitude barrier as much as a purely financial one. Not only does a poor kid have to be able to fund college, they have to be able to fund unpaid work, and they have to have a sense of how important that sort of thing will be to their future career tracks.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:42 PM
how this supposedly causes too much identification with employers
You know, I don't know that this is a larger social problem, but it's related to a widespread attitude that really annoys me -- that an employee should be pathetically grateful for the opportunity to do work. You should be so desperate for your job that starting out unpaid is no hardship; working is a joy and a privilege. That's nonsense: people, even in interesting jobs, work for pay and are valuable to their employers. The employer isn't doing the employee a favor by allowing them to work -- they should be bargaining on a level playing field.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:47 PM
I'm not convinced that internships end up being much more class biased than does college itself.
I disagree. I think it feeds on itself, and the effect is magnified over time.
I know two people from working-class backgrounds who scrambled hard (due to lack of money, social capital, etc.) to get through college. They made it, but although both would have liked work in social services and/or social justice work, they were simply unable to cross the traditional bridges to such work.
(Bridges meaning both formal unpaid internships and low-level paid positions that they could reliably count on turning into moderately well-paying jobs within 2-4 years.)
Also, I suspect that people without a lot of college-going history in their families are more likely to graduate with debt. That just increases their inability to work at a $22K-a-year job and wait for something better.
Yes, I've strayed from internships. And fwiw, I actually agree with most of Ezra's other points about the NYT op-ed.
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 3:59 PM
Speaking as someone from a reasonably comfortable but poor social capital background (i.e., we're not talking a hypothetical poor kid, but anyone not of the 'My dad went to Harvard too!' set), unpaid internships absolutely suck. When I was in college, I had to make money in order to pay for books and travel back to campus the next year. That meant that when I considered internships, they had to be paid internships, which pretty much meant I wasn't going to be doing journalism or social work or consider politics & policy as a career.
I'm not sure competitive university grants (not available at all schools by the way) would help much. Chances are, they'd help like most grants do -- the brightest of the bright would get help and do fine, but it still means the comparably qualified poorer kid gets screwed while the Hamptonified roommate gets to make connections all summer 'cause daddy's paying for the apartment.
Plus, I'm not too keen on having state education money going to pay an intern so a company doesn't have to pay a going rate.
Fuck grants. Pay the interns.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:33 PM
Cala pretty much sums up the problem I have with Ezra's argument; unpaid internships don't help people like her at all. I come from essentially the opposite position (lots of social capital but little money), so I've been able to take advantage of them, but there aren't that many people like me, so the system mostly just helps rich people with connections.
On the other hand, the reason a lot of these internships are unpaid is that the organizations (especially public sector and non-profit ones) really can't afford to pay interns, so the choice for them is between unpaid internships and no interns at all. This is, I think, one of Ezra's stronger points. Also, in my experience private-sector internships are often paid, at least in industries that can afford it and are in need of interns.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 8:58 PM
I have mixed feelings. Emotionally, I agree with Cala.
I do, however, make an exception for progressive political organizations. I want those interns to be paid, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect the stingily-funded non-proft to do the paying.
I like the right-wing's model, and I'd really like to see internship funding that followed an intern. Most of it would go to the intern, and maybe a donation could go to the non-profit. That would sweeten the deal a bit.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:14 PM
The other thing that's important is health insurance. It's going to take a while to reform the healthcare system, but, in the meantime, we need to figure out a patchwork system.
A lot of people suggest taking time off from college--a semester to work or something. I never could do this, because I got my health insurance through school.
Weirdly, this is an area where I think poor, lower-middle and many middle class kids who go to elite schools are at something of a disadvantage over slightly lower-tier schools.
A lot of schools have semster in Washington programs where people stidy in Washington and get credit for an internship. Harvard, at least, and I'm guessing that the same holds true for Yale and Princeton--though I don't know about Dartmouth, doesn't give credit for internships.
So, Harvard students all compete for the summer internships when everyone can have their pick of the best. I know of people who are not as bright but were able to intern for credit and then got good jobs.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 9:42 PM
The whole idea of unpaid internships really pisses me off. Several times in college, I had Really Cool People flat out ask me to come work for them for free during the summer, but I couldn't do it because I had to eat, and instead I worked as the girl who hauled monitors around the building setting up computer labs for $5.15 an hour.
Also, I've found that, as alluded to above, unpaid work is just plain not that good for your professional development, at least in a learning sense. I got a grant to do unpaid public interest work last summer, so even though I was getting money, from the standpoint of the two organizations I was working for, I was doing it for free. I was vastly underutilized, undertrained, poorly supervised, and generally got quite little out of the experience. I made some decent connections and got to be interviewed by reporters and be on NPR, but did I learn stuff and/or gain real skils? Not that much.
When people are paying you, they (more often than when they're not, at least) make damn sure you are doing stuff that's worth their money.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:00 PM
I was vastly underutilized, undertrained, poorly supervised, and generally got quite little out of the experience. I made some decent connections and got to be interviewed by reporters and be on NPR, but did I learn stuff and/or gain real skils? Not that much.
I did a semester in DC in undergrad and had a similar experience, only without the connections or NPR. I would have been better off in another internship or, better yet, a paying job.
At the time I had no understanding of the issues surrounding unpaid work. I lived with my parents for the entirety of undergrad and went to a public school, but my family could afford to support me at that level.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 10:19 PM
I'm sure many (perhaps most) unpaid internships are like silvana's experience, but not all of them are that bad. Sure, an organization that could pay its interns but doesn't is unlikely to take them seriously as employees, but many organizations really can't afford to pay them and some of those groups use them for actual work that really does help their professional development.
And they're not necessarily class-biased; minority students in particular can get all sorts of financial aid to enable them to do internships, especially in DC. As I've mentioned before, I interned in a senator's office last summer. Although some of the interns were rich white kids from elite schools, the rest were, well, not. This was the school with the largest contingent of students (by far).
Sorry to get so defensive about this, but I really don't think unpaid internships as a whole are as big a problem as people are saying. The major problems with our educational system lie elsewhere.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 05-31-06 11:45 PM
From my point of view, I don't see why corporations should *ever* offer unpaid internships. The only possible reason I can see is them being greedy bastards and/or ensuring the appropriate class/wealth barriers to entry into their 'club'.
As with others on this thread, there's simply no way I could (or can) afford to take on any unpaid work. Nor could anyone else from a background like mine and I can't see any good reason why those barriers are being erected except i) greed and ii) a deliberately exclusionary policy.
With non-profit organisations on the other hand I can see why some short-term unpaid internships might exist.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:31 AM
One of my friends from college landed a really prestigious unpaid journalism internship in NYC after her junior year and the only way she could afford to do it was by stripping at Scores at night. That's not just the stuff of Jerry Springer folklore.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:08 AM
Whoa, Becks, really? I thought that was just something they all said, and I let myself believe.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:10 AM
So... smart enough to land a competitive NYC journalism internship and cute enough to work at a top-flight strip club...
I'm not allowed to say that she sounds perfect, am I?
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:21 AM
17 - Really truly. She was pulling in about twice what I was making at my paid internship on Long Island.
18 - She really is quite the overachiever, isn't she? "If I'm going to work for free, I'm going to work at the best place there is. And if I'm going to have to strip to pay for it, I'm going to work at the best club in the city." (Which it was back in the day. I don't know how it stacks up now.)
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:24 AM
By night she fights crime in a vinyl outfit.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:28 AM
stacks up
Oh really.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:44 AM
Look, As Wolfson and I discussed in comments long Ago, I was friends in high school with a girl who, at University of Chicago, was well known. Besides Rather impressive intellecutal acheivments (at least According to Wolfson, I wasn't monitoring her Scholastic progress) there, she also got a job at a Club, stripping, fairly early on in her time in-Habiting the windy coty. Without making her name Easily found through a search engine (the archives Contain* it, I think), I recommend that anyone who Has deduced it check out an interesting web page That I found about her father. The web page is Enlightening, and can be found in Wikipedia. *It is Regrettable that her name wasn't google-proofed.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:57 AM
I am teh idiot, comment box formatting isn't the same as comment page formatting. I recommend viewing this comment with a fairly-sized comment window. Ignore 22 and instead read this:
Look, As Wolfson and I discussed in comments long
Ago, I was friends in high school with a girl who, at
University of Chicago, was well known. Besides
Rather impressive intellecutal acheivments (at least
According to Wolfson, I wasn't monitoring her
Scholastic progress) there, she also got a job at a
Club, stripping, fairly early on in her time in-
Habiting the windy city. Without making her name
Easily found through a search engine (the archives
Contain* it, I think), I recommend that anyone who
Has deduced it check out an interesting web page
That I found about her father. The web page is
Enlightening; the name to search for is Harold. *It is
Regrettable that her name wasn't google-proofed.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 11:10 AM
How many corporate internships really are unpaid, though? I just checked the internship listings on my schools MonsterTRAK site, and the overwhelming majority were both corporate and paid. The main exceptions were internships in journalism and publishing, and there I'll grant that the companies take advantage of the large demand, thereby excluding people with less money/social capital. Engineers, though, are set.
(Public sector and non-profit internships, of course, were mostly unpaid.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 11:56 AM
Politics and anything arts-related. All unpaid, all trust fundie.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:00 PM
Sure, but that's a pretty small segment of the working world right there. And I suspect many (probably not all) of those organizations can't afford to hire people for pay.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:04 PM
I am disappointed that 23 didn't have anything to do with sick chickens.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:15 PM
But there's the major problem when the media companies, where there's a lot of money being made, do not pay much if anything. Although the small magazines may lack the funds, the number of interns in the relatively rich television, music, and movie industries that go unpaid is pretty atrocious.
Posted by JAC | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:18 PM
that's a pretty small segment of the working world
Yes and no. Beyond politics and the arts, there's the rest of the nonprofit sector. And that's fairly substantial -- about 10% of the U.S. labor force, or 12 million people. (2001 stats, may have changed a little.)
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:22 PM
My point is a different one, which is that it bugs me that politics and the arts are only available to rich kids. Both suffer greatly for it, I think.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:23 PM
There's also a problem, I presume, given that politics and the media are two professions which exert significant influence. Two of the central 'opinion-forming' professions which erect substantial class-barriers.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:25 PM
There's also a problem, I presume, given that politics and the media are two professions which exert significant influence. Two of the central 'opinion-forming' professions which erect substantial class-barriers.
Right, which is why we have a whole pundit class which thinks that the economy is doing great, and can be counted on to salivate over tax cuts and welfare reform and anything that bashes the poor generally.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:29 PM
I agree with all of 28-32, but that just shows that the problem with unpaid internships is much more specific than a lot of people are saying. I still don't see how it can be fixed, though.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:33 PM
My point is a different one, which is that it bugs me that politics and the arts are only available to rich kids. Both suffer greatly for it, I think.
Care to provide a cite for your assertion that there are only two rich kids in the U.S., Mr. Drymala?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:41 PM
33: You fix it by getting a job you hate, working dog hours at it, making a lot of money, and letting your kid be the artist or politician.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:41 PM
Also, I think a lot of news/media organizations have unpaid internships because they benefit from all companies in the sector being lumped together in one group when people discuss the practice. I mean, I understand why The American Prospect might not be able to pay its interns, but NBC or Vogue? Come on.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:47 PM
I think a lot of those media conglomerates get away with it because there are so many (rich) kids who are willing to work for free because the jobs seem so glamorous. This doesn't work in other industries, so they pay their interns.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 12:55 PM
Another problem in changing things is that the amount of people who can afford shorter-term unpaid internships is larger than the amount of people most would consider unambiguously rich in the trust-fund sense of the word. So you end up with people who are clearly middle-class - but also clearly have a fair amount of privileges - resenting being lumped in with the rich, defending the current set-up because they worked hard to get their kids the chance to be unpaid interns.
Why you don't get a lot of the same people saying their kids should be paid in internships where the employer should be able to afford it is beyond me.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 1:17 PM
Who says you don't?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 1:40 PM
teofilo in 14: Sorry to get so defensive about this, but I really don't think unpaid internships as a whole are as big a problem as people are saying.
Now, I'm going to get a bit defensive.
I did have one arts-type job where I got paid minimum wage. The person who got promoted to assistant director was a big-time trust-funded person. It was a bit like Vogue, though not particularly fashionable-- this was, after all, an old-time Boston sort of place--in that the people in upper-level positioms were expected to be educated at certain types of schools and to maintain a certain type of look. As I later said, in another job interview for a business job, "it was a great place to work, if you could afford to." Beyond that, I don't know that much about how this affects the arts.
I agree with Drymala, though, that it hurts politics enormously. Outside of some of the staffers for members of the Congressional Black Caucus, I don't know how many people on the HIll, actually know what it's like to be without health insurance or to have really crappy insurance. I think that this contributes to a lack of urgency in dealing with the healthcare crisis.
teofilo, have you ever not filled a prescription, because you couldn't afford it? I have. Whenever I look at jobs now, the first thing I ask myself is, "What are the health benefits like?" I resent the hell out of the fact that tthis is even a consideration.
Mark Schmitt wrote a post a while ago praising someone for hiring a staffer who had actually been on welfare. We need people who can do statistical analysis and have mastered the policy details, but we also need the moral urgency of people whose own lives have been affected by policies.
This is the chief complaint against the Kewl Kidz articulated by Atrios and Digby. Once you're in, you'll always land on your feet, so the actual policies don't really matter. For the rest of us, these issues affect our lives.
Some very rich people are capable of great empathy or a sense of the concerns of the common man. I don't want to bar those people from politics. FDR was an aristocrat, but for the most part, he had it. Most middle to upper-middle class kids don't have that sort of moral imagination. Hell, most people don't. For most of us, we're really only able to care passionately about things which have ffected us (and those we know) personally.
That's why it matters in politics.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 1:55 PM
I don't have any data backing this up, but I would guess from the way resentment seems to work in politics that, if the issued is framed as a straight up rich vs. poor one, the people saying "but we're not really rich" are more likely to defend the system of unpaid internships than not.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 1:58 PM
That's why it matters in politics.
Yes, exactly.
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:00 PM
On the other hand, there's probably no shortage of people out there who defend the wealthy on these sorts of terms.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:04 PM
It matters in the arts because I want our art (that is, literature, visual art, drama, performance, music, etc. etc.) to be urgent and reflect all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, not just one background or experience. This is not so much about internships, I guess; more about having the disposable income to pursue these endeavors, although the internship thing is just as prevalent in, say, the theater community as anywhere else.
In theater, for example, every year we have 75 plays that open in New York depicting what it's like to be either (a) young and rich and alienated, (b) married and rich and alienated or (c) unmarried and powerful and rich and alienated. I'd trade them all for another play like Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train, written by a former prison counselor.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:12 PM
My hatred of the rich isn't completely transparent, is it?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:14 PM
No, just translucent.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:16 PM
Fucker.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:22 PM
Look, I don't mean to be defending the current system; I think it would be great if all internships were paid, and I certainly agree that politics suffers from a lack of poor people (art too, I guess, though I don't know much about it). My point is just that the money to pay interns has to come from somewhere, and I don't see where everyone is proposing to get it.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:33 PM
43: Every so often I get the urge to shoot somebody in the face.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:34 PM
There are open threads at Atrios that will instruct you not to do that.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:40 PM
My point is just that the money to pay interns has to come from somewhere, and I don't see where everyone is proposing to get it.
Apologies for repeating myself, but I think a large portion of this problem can be solved by funder education. Nonprofits will be able to pay their interns when their own funders understand that it is not, in the long run, more efficient or somehow better to wring as much free work out of as many people as possible.
(Some funders get this already; some nonprofits already operate within an unhealthy purer-than-thou worldview when it comes to bare-bones payrolls. Still and all....)
N.b. I have a strong personal bias on this topic.
Posted by Witt | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:45 PM
Have I told that joke about the difference between an Irishman and an American here? I can't find it googling the site. In any case:
An American, walking home from work after ten grueling hours at his factory job, looks up at the big house on the hill and says: "One of these days I'm going to have a house just like that!"
An Irishman walking home looks up at the big house on the hill and says: "One of these days I'm going to get that bastard!"
My sympathies are often on the Irish side of the divide.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:46 PM
re: 52
Why do you hate America?
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:52 PM
That joke is awesome.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:52 PM
Well, with persistence and hard work, the Irishman's odds of achieving his goals are an awful lot higher than the American's.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:53 PM
My point is just that the money to pay interns has to come from somewhere, and I don't see where everyone is proposing to get it.
You know what? I bet a lot of those places don't actually need interns. Can't pay 'em? Don't hire 'em.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:57 PM
I know no one in the art biz—except for people working at the Sm/th50n/an—who doesn't have terrible, terrible health insurance that nevertheless constitutes a big chunk of her expenses. Even among the married couples, most of the spouses (other artists, nonprofiteers, ne'erdowells) do not have jobs that provide partner benefits. And I just quit my job to freelance full-time (hooray!) which means I have just two weeks left of bona fide health insurance before I blindly settle on the cheapest possible insurance option. I'ts a pretty screwy life and I'm always worried that I'll get sick and decline seeing a doctor in order to save money. Or have to have dental surgery.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 2:59 PM
Have I mentioned that I find stoking my resentments and grudges to be a fantastic motivator for getting off my ass and doing stuff (in my case, writing)? And most of the people I've spoken to who had extraordinary social mobility (of the type I suppose I'm working for) confessed the same sorts of feelings. Like, "It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!"
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:00 PM
Well, with persistence and hard work, the Irishman's odds of achieving his goals are an awful lot higher than the American's.
True, but this does no more than re-state the well known proposition that if you fail to acheive a reasonable standard of performance, there are two things you can do, improve your performance or lower the standard.
Seriously, though, I have to say that this actually rings true to me: "It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!" This does not speak well of human nature, however.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:06 PM
Hey, 'Smasher: You got mugged? Or does Yglesias have another roommate? If it's you, that's awful. (I suppose it's awful even if it happened to someone I don't know, but you know what I mean.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:09 PM
True, but this does no more than re-state the well known proposition that if you fail to acheive a reasonable standard of performance, there are two things you can do, improve your performance or lower the standard.
I think of it as more pointing out that the Irishman is a realist, and the American is living in a fantasy world.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:10 PM
I'ts a pretty screwy life and I'm always worried that I'll get sick and decline seeing a doctor in order to save money.
You dropped "for beer" off the end the sentence.
"It's gonna be so great when I succeed, beause I'll be so happy!" is much less potent than, "I'm gonna show all those fuckers!"
The problem with this is that if, as I believe, the world is much less meritocratic than we like to pretend (at least over the short run), you end up with a lot of angry people who weren't able to show the fuckers through no fault of their own.
The real way to do this is to lower the cost of producing a play or being an art type somehow. It's extraordinary to realize that there are people in the blogosphere who've somehow made their bones in the opinion world on the basis of free software and $X/mo in hosting costs. And no, I have no idea how you would go about lowering those costs. (If you figure it out, let me know, so that I can steal your idea and make a lot of money.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:16 PM
SCMT -- it's getting so one can put together a film or a CD or some sort of digital product for mere pennies compared to the past. It gets cheaper every day. Theater is tougher, because you have to have a physical space in a set time, but there are ways, and there are outlets for people if they get together with collaborators and save up some $$. The Fringe Festival, for instance.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:24 PM
Yes, I got mugged last night. My blog isn't working so I can't even put up an I-got-mugged story, but it was basically terrifying.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:28 PM
Smasher,
I would stick with COBRA for now. That way, you'll have time to sort through your options.
Massachusetts is a safe place to be in the individual market. It's guaranteed-issue and community rated. They can bar coverage of pre-existing conditions for up to 6 months if your coverage has lapsed for more than 63 days, but that's it. The state is dominated by non-profit insurers. Blue Cross is still Blue Cross--nt some Anthem/ Wellpoint for profit deal.
Contrast this with most states where insurers can attach riders refusing to cover any condition you already have. In California, they can't do that, so they just refuse to underwrite you.
In California, Blue Cross has been retroactively examining the applications of everyone who bought individual policies when they file claims. They're claiming that people failed tp disclose their pre-existing conditions.
Matthew Holt had two posts up on this commenting on articles in the LA Times:
In the first he gets this gem from the Times:
And the second offers this:
Damn those fuckers.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:29 PM
However, this time I didn't lose my wallet—he just took the cash out and bolted—so at least I'm not looking forward to that crap again.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:30 PM
Dude. At least you're okay.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:31 PM
Thanks, LB.
Joe D, do you have plans to do the DC Fringe Festival? I'm reasonably good friends with one of that show's producers/founders, and if I can put you in contact with her or whatever, lemme know.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 3:35 PM
First there's all this talk about "vodka martinis", and now a DC Fringe Festival? Bah!
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:09 PM
Oh and glad to hear you're okay, 'Smasher. Now that you've been mugged, are you going to become a Republican?
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:10 PM
We got robbed two months ago, so now I'm ready to become whatever it is a Republican becomes when he gets robbed. (Entrenched? Emboldened? More powerful than you can possible imagine?)
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:18 PM
The Antichrist?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 4:21 PM
I think the second crime incident makes you flip back to being a communist.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:18 PM
whatever it is a Republican becomes when he gets robbed
Armed.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:34 PM
Anarchist.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 5:48 PM
Dude, 'Smasher, I figure you'll be safer in Harlem than in our nation's capitol. Come North, young man!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 6:07 PM
Vigilante. Also, glad to hear you're all right.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 6:34 PM
Smasher,
You guys weren't hoem before. There was no force or fear involved. It wasn't robbery. YOu guys got burgled.
Glad to hear that you're okay.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:31 PM
Fuck, Smasher. Glad you're OK.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 8:47 PM
I'm glad to hear you're ok, but I think the second mugging turns you into a royalist.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:00 PM
Uck. Getting robbed, mugged, whatever, sucky, scary. I'm glad you're okay.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 9:00 PM
Thanks, all. As it turns out it's only strengthened my resolve as a Nowitzness.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:39 PM
Oh, and BG! We were home. But we were asleep. I didn't recognize the distinction between robbed and burgled before and I continue to bungle it up. The important thing to take away, I think, is that no matter what happened before, Dirk Nowitzki put up 50 points on the big board this evening. Also, I saw a rather great photography exhibit, but that's neither here nor there.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:43 PM
The important thing to take away, I think, is that no matter what happened before, Dirk Nowitzki put up 50 points on the big board this evening.
So butch . . .
Also, I saw a rather great photography exhibit
and yet so far.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:46 PM
I'm glad you're OK, Smasher, and I felt for you. Right up until I read, "As it turns out it's only strengthened my resolve as a Nowitzness."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06- 1-06 10:53 PM
Hard to believe your girlfriend's safer in Georgia than you are in D.C.! At least her muggings use toy weapons!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06- 2-06 8:28 AM