The company (supposedly an ethics based company no less) I work for would like to start an unpaid internship program. I expressed hesitation, and brought up some campaigns I’m aware of that are trying to eliminate unpaid internships, on two separate occasions. Both times upper management brought up the “good side of unpaid internships” and quickly moved on. So I put together a 5 page report with 2 pages of cited sources (on my own time which I know is not very anti work of me, but I’m passionate about this topic and I was really hoping to make a difference). A few points I covered: how the practice of unpaid internships leads to discrimination and inequality in the workforce, how unpaid internships harm POC the most and are obstacles to diversity, exploitation of free labor, exacerbation of the $1.7 trillion national student loan debt, the widening of the wealth gap, and the potential for bad PR (since we are supposed to be progressive and ethics based, plus of all my points I thought at least this one would start a conversation).
I did not get a great response in many ways but essentially their rebuttal hangs on this idea: “none of these issues relate to us because the unpaid internship we offer is for college credit. If a college student needs some experience and would rather take an internship than another class then they should be able to do that and we should trust them as adults to be able to make that decision.”
I have relooked at all of my sources and from what I can tell an internship for college credit is included in the case people are making against unpaid internships. Although, I haven’t found a source that explicitly says that.
I’d love to hear some takes on this and I would especially love citations.
Of course, I want ammo for this argument but if anyone thinks college credit makes an unpaid internship fair- I’d love to hear why.