The Luxury of an Unpaid Placement

In order to get a job, you have to have experience, and in order to gain experience you need to get a job. A degree may teach you about a certain field, but rather than paying you, it puts you in debt, so, chickens and eggs aside, only one option remains: work experience in the form of University placements.

Some universities, including my own, offer their students a placement year, where students pay a significantly reduced fee in order to stay on the establishment’s register, while working elsewhere (or, indeed, at the establishment itself), while others encourage students to gain experience over the holidays. Sometimes these placements offer a yearly, monthly or hourly salary, and students are given a chance to replace some of that money they spent on Topshop, vodka and super noodles over the previous 24 or so months. High-paid jobs are the most desirable; everyone wants to be able to have a little bit (or a lottle bit) of extra cash to stave off the anxiety problems that arise from constantly living in fear of ending up broke, but unfortunately this is not always possible. I can’t speak for every single person on every single course, but from my own experience I can tell you that we, as Music Tech students, were pretty much told that a large percentage of us would not be paid and so, as a result, I eventually deigned to apply for a placement in London, and to once again live with my parents.

I had the interview for my placement, and was delighted to learn that I had been selected. I was to spend the year working in a radio and voiceover recording studio as a runner, and I couldn’t have been happier. After having previously applied and attended an interview for another placement in London and decided (during the interview) that I categorically did NOT want to work there, getting a placement that I was actually excited to undertake was a big moment for me. I also learned the best bit: I was going to be paid.

The salary for my placement was roughly suggested but I didn’t particularly enquirer too deeply as to what exactly it would be, as, to be honest, I was all just a bit too excited to ask at my interview, and it’s not really the kind of thing you ask over email. It was my understanding that I would receive around £200 a month, which my bank account was happy to hear – and then I decided to work out my travel.

To get from my house to my new office, I would have to drive to the station, take the train to Marylebone, then take a tube to the nearest tube stop. My parents and I (mainly my parents) worked out what the best option for travel would be, and we worked out that if I paid for the travelcard myself, not only would I start out well outside my overdraft, but my cumulative earnings throughout the year would leave me having made a three hundred pound loss. Ouch. I couldn’t afford to pay for the ticket myself, and so my parents agreed that they would pay for it for me. I pledged to pay as much as I could afford, and to pay them back for at least most of it as soon as I could afford it, which would probably have to be after uni. This agreement meant that I could keep all of the ‘profits’ I earned in the year, which will eventually go towards my final year rent.

I am one of the lucky ones. I was able to find a placement close to home, and my parents could afford to help me out when I needed it; other people are not so lucky. What are you supposed to do when your dream placement is miles away from home, where you don’t have free rent and board available to you? Do you take the job and live a year with crippling debt and a constant sense of impending doom as that negative red number on the cash point screen grows bigger and bigger each day you’re away? Or do you drop the job, and settle for something that isn’t going to make you happy, but lands you experience ‘in the industry’ (despite not being in your preferred field) and a tiny bit of profit to go with it? Or what if you can do either of these things, and you end up with a mediocre job and an exponentially decreasing bank balance, while still having to live at home, or pay a lot for travel, or live in an expensive flat, or any combination of these circumstances? I am lucky in that my placement is something I love, and I have the means (or the sponsors) to be able to do it, but for many, many people a placement is a luxury that they just can’t afford. If you don’t have parents who can subsidise your living or chip in towards your rent or whatever, how are you supposed to get the vital experience you need to get a job in the no doubt competitive industry that your degree was supposed to enable you to work in? I am unbelievably grateful that so many things have fallen into place for me, and this privilege is not something I take for granted. I can’t imagine having to work for a year in a placement that didn’t fulfil me in the slightest and to still end up just as broke as before, or maybe even more.

From a company’s standpoint, at least in the music industry, as far as they know you are unskilled. Why would they pay you to do a job when they could hire someone who is already trained to do the exact same job and be good at it from day one? Placements provide students with a foot in the door to get into their desired profession, day to day learning and contacts that they might find incredibly helpful later on in life. But what good is all of that when a quarter of young people (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/10000348/young-depressed-about-money) reported that their constant concerns about their financial position has led them to become depressed? I for one am constantly anxious about it, counting every pound that goes towards a bus ticket or a pint with friends, and I’m in a relatively good position, thousands of others will be more anxious still.

I don’t know what the solution is. Sure, I would love to have a big fat salary and to never have to worry about being able to afford something, but I know that that’s silly; it’s never gunna happen. Perhaps some kind of performance pay would provide a good middle ground for both parties, where hard-working students get a higher salary while those who doss about get the bare minimum, but I think it’s safe to say that no young person should have to work for free. If you are a contributing member of the team you work for, I don’t understand how a company can, with a clear conscience, send you off each month with absolutely nothing to show for it. Unpaid placements are actively contributing towards the debt and (what feels like) poverty of young people today as they try to get a head start in their careers. The vicious cycle of no job/no experience often leaves no option other than working for free, and it’s getting beyond a joke. I am lucky that the company I work for recognise that placement students NEED some form of income, I just hope that it won’t be long before all others follow suit.