Sinking the Intern-ship: The Dire Need For a Systematic Overhaul of Academic Internships

Dear Hiring Manager: For the following — brief and endlessly rewritten — reasons, I believe I will make the perfect candidate for your upcoming fall internship position.

100 words. Give or take. To string together 21 years of self-worth into a few sentences that determine her future. Why should you hire her? It’s all in her almighty cover letter.

As she settles into being a senior, Andrea Pearl, 21, lands her seventh internship in three years. “We should just be learning about what we want to do,” said Pearl, a music business major at New York University. “I like the idea of learning alongside getting a glimpse of the industry, but instead, internships are about getting a headstart on a 50-year-long career.”

With the finish line moved back due to higher retirement ages, the start of the race had to be moved forward a bit. Didn’t you hear 17’s the new 35? Now more than ever, you’re expected to leave college not only with an academic education but a full career portfolio. Despite unpaid internships’ legal obligation to favor the student’s benefit, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern how having ten by the time you graduate is in the best interest of already overwhelmed young adults.

The U.S. is no stranger to capitalism forcing longer work hours with lower benefits, but out of the smolders of “quiet quitting,” a movement against this long-held idealization of the corporate hustle culture has formed. As the fight for better working conditions kicks into gear with the start of a new decade, we must wrestle with the question: are internships — in particular ones that don’t pay — truly educationally beneficial experiences or simply employment theater? And how can we reduce the effects of burnout and fix the culture of ambition porn launching students into hand-to-hand gladiator-style combat for the gauntlet of achievement before our next generation of workers limp off in the first leg of the race?

Pressure and Inevitable Burnout

Recent graduate Leticia Cohen, 23, balanced student-work life at NYU as they precariously juggled four internships. Cohen worked for Viacom CBS, A24, and SNL, all while navigating their way through a compounded Film and TV/Business degree.

“Everyone around me had internships,” Cohen said, “I always thought it was like a guilt-based thing like ‘let’s go around the room and share what you’ve done this summer, share the internships you’ve had.’ You didn’t want it to come to you and have it be like, ‘Oh, you know I just spent the summer reading books.’ You wanted to have the coolest thing to say.”

Pearl reflected similarly about her major. “I know my friends that haven’t had the perfect internships with not, a [corporation] name so recognizable get a bit more stressed out because they don’t feel as set as other people that just kind of got lucky.”

Cohen “always learned more in internships than they did at school,” acknowledging the positives of their experiences. “It’s really exhausting, but at the same time, I feel very grateful to have had these internships,” they said.

However, this benefit comes with a toll. As years of pressure builds-up, a crash is inevitable. Cohen felt the heat. “I was really fucking stressed…You learn how to live in anxiety and constant stress,” they said. Cohen moved home for the summer after graduation, “I’m giving myself six months off, just like staring into the sky,” the pressure had been overwhelming.

According to a 2008 study published by PubMed analyzing the effect of student burnout, it occurs more often for working students. Balancing school and work has been further confirmed to potentially lead to burnout, as published by the International Journal of Educational Development in 2004, where “student burnout has a significant negative effect on academic achievement.” As well as both a physical (eating habits, migraines) and ‘psycho-behavioral’ (“decreased ability to remember and concentrate, decreased decision-making power”) toll, according to a 2022 research paper written by psychology professors at Transilvania University of Braşov

“I don’t have time for myself…I’m basically working full time, but I’m a student at the same time,” said Pearl. And in some cases, this stressor is no longer optional. “It’s literally in our curriculum. We have to do five credits.” Pearl says.

Internships as a Tool of Capitalism

There is a correlation between internships and career benefits as those with intern experience earn 12% higher salaries and receive 16% more job offers than those without, according to surveys published by Compare Camp.

College career centers attempt to ease this transition from college to the workforce by helping students land jobs. An internship, says Joseph Mercadante, senior associate director from the NYU Wasserman Career center, “is a great opportunity to get into a company, build those connections, and understand” the work environment. But from the possibility of benefit grows societal pressure. If you lack these connections, you’re suddenly behind.

At the intersection of universities, employers, and students’ ambition lies both the motivation and flaw in the system of internships.

In his role as program coordinator, Dennis Aronov tries to combat this by ensuring that an intern’s time at Starbaby Enterprises is personally rewarding. “If it’s an internship, isn’t the point for you to learn? It’s a balancing act between finding things that people will learn but also what they enjoy,” Aronov said. “So, for me, that means I’m checking in to make sure that whatever I’m giving you isn’t sucking the life out of you.”

The Toll of Unpaid Work

If the lean into capitalism is unavoidable, as students continue to donate their energy in search of career advancement, they should be getting paid. Especially when accounting that women and minorities have access to paid internships at much lower rates than their white male counterparts.

The Nace foundation found that unpaid internships demonstrate “a negative impact on graduate employment outcomes” compared to paid intern experience. Unpaid interns were also 11% less likely to discern high levels of job satisfaction at their first place of employment than those who participated in paid internships.

“I have a bunch of friends who have had to turn down unpaid internships because they can’t afford it. They’re not able to focus on their future if they can’t focus on how to sustain themselves in the present.” Pearl says

Some of this burden falls on the universities. By working to guarantee course credit internships are paid and eliminating the system that charges students for unpaid work, they could also begin to reduce the income inequality of their graduates entering the workforce for what is obviously not the first time. It’s just the first time many students get a paycheck.